(ISSN 0043-6534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

The State Historical Society of Wisconsin * Vol. 68, No. 2 • Winter, 1984—1985

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••^i**.. THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN RICHARD A. ERNEY, Director Officers WILLIAM C. KIDD, President WILSON B. THIEDE, Treasurer NEWELL G. MEYER, First Vice-President RICHARD A. ERNEY, Secretary MRS. L. PRENTICE EAGER, JR., Second Vice-President

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISC:ONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846—two years before statehood—and tharlered in 1853, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and disseminating know ledge of Wisconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Scxiety serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they relate to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and researcli facility in Madison as well as a statewide system of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of historical materials, both scholarly and popular. MEMBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. Annual membership is |I5, or $12.50 for persons over 65 or members of affiliated societies. Family membership is $20, or $15 for persons over 65 or members of affiliated societies. Contributing membership is $50; supporting, $100; sustaining, $200-500; patron, $500 or more. THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of (Curators which includes, ex officio, the Governor (or his designee) and three citizens appointed by the Ciovernor with the approval of the Senate; the Speaker of the Assembly and the President of the Senate, or a member from the majority party and a member from the minorilv parly from each house designated by them; the President of the University of Wisconsin, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the Chairman of the Administrative C^ommittee of the Wisconsin Council for Local History. The other twenty-four members of the Board of Curators are elected by the membership. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover. NOTE: The Board of (airators will be reduced from thirty-six to twenty-four members on or before the annual meeting in I98().

The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, at the juncture of State and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. A partial listing of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows: General Administration 262-.^266 Library circulation desk 262-3421 General information 262-3271 Maps 262-5867 Affiliated local societies 262-2316 Membership 262-9613 Archives reading room 262-3338 Microforms reading room 262-9621 Contributionof manuscript materials 262-3248 Museum tours 262-2704 Editorial offices 262-9603 Newspapers reference 262-9584 Film collections 262-0585 Picture and sound collections 262-9581 Genealogical and general reference inquiries . . . .262-9590 Public information office .262-9606 Government publications and reference 262-2781 .Sales desk 262-3271 Historic preservation 262-1339 School services 262-9567 Historic sites 262-3271 Speakers bureau 262-9606

ON THE COVER: Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall meeting with Lt. General Stanley H. Ford, commander of the Second Army, and an unidentified National Guard officer during the maneuvers at Camp McCoy in 1940. Photo by the Signal Corps, U.S. Army, courtesy the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, Lexington, Virginia. [WHi (X3) 40587] Volume 68, Number 2 / Winter, 1984-1985 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, Blitzkrieg for Beginners: Wisconsin 53706. Disttibuted The Maneuvers of 1940 in Central Wisconsin 83 to members as part of their dues. (Annual membership, Thomas Doherty $15, or $12.50 for those over 65 or members of affiliated societies; family membership, $20, or $ 15 for those over 65 or The Minus First Meeting of the members of affiliated sociedes; American Astronomical Society: contributing, $50; supporting, $100; sustaining, $200-$500; Williams Bay, Wisconsin, 1897 108 patron, $500 or more.) Single Donald E. Osterbrock numbers from Volume 57 forward are $2. Microhlmed copies available through University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, When John Barleycorn Michigan 48106; reprints of Went Into Hiding in Wisconsin 119 Volumes 1 through 20 and most issues of Volumes 21 Paul W. Glad through 56 are available from Kraus Reprint C^ompany, Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546. Reading America 137 (xmimunications should be Mary Lou M. Schultz addressed to the editor. The Society does not assume responsibility for statements made by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin, and at Book Reviews 140 additional mailing offices. POST.MASTER: Send address Book Review Index 154 changes to Wisconsin Magazine of History, Madison, Wisconsin Wisconsin History Checklist 155 53706. Copyright © 1985 by the State Historical Society of Accessions 158 Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Magazine of History is indexed annually by Contributors 160 the editors; cumulative indexes are assembled decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in America: Histoiy Editor andLife, Historical Abstracts, Index to Literature on the American PAULH. tJASS Indian, and the Combined Associate Editors Retrospective Index lo Journals in History, 1838-1974. WILLIAM C. MARTEN JOHN O. floLziiuEXER WHi (X:i) 40.590 High-spirited guardsmen loading train for trip to annual training site. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. Blitzkrieg for Beginners: The Maneuvers of 1940 in Central Wisconsin

By Thomas Doherty

O the four thousand 32nd Divi­ across the Atlantic in ever-mounting num­ T sion veterans from Wisconsin bers, the divisions of the U.S. Army had who marched down Grand Avenue on the proved that in spite of America's historic re­ morning of June 6, 1919, Milwaukee's Red fusal to maintain a large peacetime military Arrow Day celebration more than lived up to a establishment, our land army would be a force boy's dream of what a soldier's homecoming to reckon with in any war involving the great should be like. Banks and businesses were powers. closed in their honor. The division's wartime The 32nd was one of those divisions. Cre­ commander, Major General William "Bun­ ated out of National Guard regiments from ker" Haan, led the parade on horseback. Six Wisconsin and Michigan, it suffered the first DeHavilland army planes flew over in forma­ of over 2,600 combat deaths on June 3, 1918, tion.' during a German raid into trenches where the The last of the division's soldiers had re­ division was training, and its last on November turned less than a month before from occupa­ 10, while still attacking in the hours before the tion duty along the Rhine. By then many armistice.- Except for a few weeks out to rest earlier arrivals had already settled back into hometowns and jobs. On this day they gath­ ^None of the casualty figures that I found agree, ered from across the state—and from govern­ (iarlock's estimates for the division are 3,466 killed; ment hospitals outside Wisconsin—lor an 10,473 wounded. G. W. Garlock, Tales of the Thirty-Second emotional welcome loud with patriotic music (West Salem, Wisconsin, 1927), 275. The division history put the number of killed at 2,660; wounded, 10,813. joint and patriotic colors, their parade route noisy War History Commissions of Michigan and Wisconsin, and swarming on all sides with cheering and The 32nd Division in the World War, 1917-1919 (Madison, singing and a blur of waving flags. The march­ 1920), 296. Even government publications disagree. The ing men were followed by hundreds of War With Germany, A Statistical Survey (Washington, D.G., 1919) lists 2,915 dead and 10,477 wounded, wh'ile Ameri­ wounded veterans in flower-bedecked autos. can Armies and Battlefields in Europe (Washington, D.G., They lunched at the Auditorium, the Hotel 1938) puts the figures at 3,028 and 10,233. Another divi­ Pfister, the Milwaukee Athletic Club, the Scot­ sion history cites a total of 12,394 casualties and breaks tish Rites Cathedral. At the military ball that down the number of killed, wounded, and died of wounds night, ten thousand people danced to three for each regiment of the division for each campaign. American Battle Monuments C^omnussion, 32nd Division orchestras and two bands. Summaiy of Operations in the World War (Washington, D.G., Raised in little more than a year, hurried 1943), 72. William E. Moore and James G. Russell put the estimate of total casualties at 13,400. U.S. Official Pictures of the World War (Washington, D.C., 1920). Early in 1918, when the 32nd was designated a replacement division 'Newspapers consulted for this event were The Mil­ (events and a forceful commanding general saved the di­ waukee Journal, The Milwaukee Sentinel, and The Wisconsin vision from such inglorious, piecemeal destruction), ap­ News, May 31 through June 7, 1919. proximately 1,200 junior officers and enlisted men of the Cofjyright © 1985 by The State Historical Society of'Wisconsin 83 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved WISCONSIN MACTAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

and take on replacements, the division hacl re­ pared to the speed with which other modern mained in combat throughout that five-month nations could mobilize, it was an eternity. Be­ period. A writer in The Inpanlry ftmrnal called cause the U.S. had started virtually from the 32nd the "hardest worked" American divi­ scratch, the army did not become a factor in sion and noted that it had earned "the same the war until almost too late to affect the out­ number of battle honors as the 1st, and one come. Would the defense of the United States more than those allotted to the 2d," both Reg­ continue to rest largely upon the nostalgic no­ ular Armv outfits."' tion of the Minute Man—the righteous citizen By law, once guardsmen had been activated armed—or had the Great War ushered it into for federal service, their state obligations were the modern world of large standing and re­ over. Thus, upon discharge from the army, serve armies, of serious strategic and eco­ these men ancl the hometown units to which nomic planning for war?' they belonged were separated from the Na­ The generals had argued for generations tional Guard as well. Back home, they had pa­ that volunteers alone could not provide a raded down their own Main Streets one last modern army with the necessary manpower. time, accepting tributes from Jobs Daughters In a fully mobilized industrial society, a draft in pristine white, from local officials, and from was essential to regulate the flow of manpower proud neighbors, then disappeared back into into the army and to balance the demands of civilian life. the army against those of industry and agricul­ Within weeks of the big celebration, Wis­ ture. Not only were state-run militias an unre­ consin's Adjutant General, Orlando tJohvay, liable national reserve in terms of quality and sought volunteers for a reorganized state Na­ availability, the regulars argued, but the num­ tional Guard. Hoi way envisioned an organiza­ bers they were capable of providing were in­ tion of 10,400 guardsmen plus another 6,000 significant beside the mobilized armies of Eu­ in reserve. * But in Wisconsin, as across the na­ rope.'' tion, efforts to rebuild the guard ran up A procession of generals including Peyton against a profound war-weariness among po­ March, Chief of Staff of the Army, "Black tential recruits, administrative hurdles from Jack" Pershing, commander of the American the army, and uncertainty regarding the fu­ Expeditionary Force in Europe, and Leonard ture role of the state militia in the national de­ Wood, went before the military committees of fense plans. Congress to argue that now was the time to It was during late 1919 and early 1920 that establish this reserve ancl the peacetime draft the professional army, the National Ciuard, necessary to maintain it. 1 he nation needed a and the Congress debated the inevitable ques­ larger Regular Army and a system of reserves tion: what elements of the wartime army answerable only to the President, not to should be incorporated in a reorganized post­ dozens of governors as well. war defense establishment? Given the relative Having for decades before the war been lack of preparedness in 1917, the United relegated to a literal and figurative wilderness, States had built an army and converted its undermanned and armed more for police economy with remarkable speed. But com- duty than war, the army was making its pitch tc:> move into the mainstream of American life 128th Infantrv were transferred to the Eirst Di\ision. and to finally unburden itself of its partner­ Dead and wounded from among those original ;^2nd ship with the National Guard, which it consid­ members could have shown up in some tallies of 32nd ered the last vestige of a long discredited casualties. .Also, units from other organizations were at­ tached to the 32nd during certain campaigns, including, militia system. To sweeten the pill of a peace- for instance, a regiment of field artillery from South Da­ kota. (Casualties suffered by these units may be included in •'John Dickinson, The Building of an .Armv (New \'()rk, some casualty summaries, excluded troni others. Inlantrv 1922), 204-205. replacements were received by the thousands, and within *'"Our mobile Armv is S(j ridictilotisK small in the days manv were casualties, some in artillery barrages that world's game [of poker] that it amounts to nothing better left few identifiable remains. CCasualty figures compiled than a discard!" wrote .Adna Chaffee, a former chief of from such a deadly, crowded, ever-changing enxiron- stall, in 1909 in his introduction to Homer Lea's Valor of ment were bound to be full ol contradictions. Ignorance. The militia was preoccupied with social e\ents, '"Battlefield Casualties in the World War," in Infantry not "duty to the nation," and what .America needed. Chaf­ 7O!«7M/(Januarv, 1927), 81-83. fee argued, was a real armv with a real reserve with obliga­ niie Milwaukee Sentinel, May31. 1919,p.4. tory service "in peace and war [fori all men and women."

84 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS

WHi (X;?) 40.-)9fi Citizen-soldiers at camp. Courtesy the Wisconsin Nationid Guard. time draft, the generals were quick to point strikes and urban unrest had been essentially out the secondary benefits to the nation. The reactionary and sometimes bloody, the army's army would "Americanize"" the immigrants would be progressive and constructive. It festering in our cities, inoculating them would head off domestic unrest by re­ against the Bolshevik epidemic that threat­ educating those most likely to foment it. ened our way of life. Immigrants, country Draftees would go in dirty, come out clean; go boys, city slickers, rich and poor alike would in sickly, cunning, seditious, come out up­ return to the Job market as eager young citi­ right, raring to go, and proud of it. zens, trained and motivated to take their place But the army was up against a Congress in the industrial life of the nation. While on which was by long tradition skeptical of pro­ duty, they would accomplish valuable civic fessional soldiers and their efforts to under­ works. Above all, the nation would finally have mine the state militias, a citizenry that could a reliable military reserve that could be con­ see no sense in destroying militarism abroad verted into a great army on relatively short only to resurrect it at home, and a National notice. Guard Association that was not about to stand by as its own hard-won role in the nation's de­ fense scheme was usurped. The long-standing antagonism between the N effect the army was trying to Regular Army and the National Guard, which I cash in on the very role which the 'Testimony of Major General W.J. Snow in Hearings National Guard wanted to escape: the keeper Before the Committee on Military Affairs (House of Repre­ of domestic order. But while for the past half sentatives, 66 Clongress, 2 session, 1920), 1273. century the guard's peacekeeper role during ''Dickinson, The Building of an Army, 32.3—377. 85 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

ton. Gradually this balkanized proliferation of zouaves and hussars surrendered their sashes, swallowtails, and shakos to grudgingly adopt the uniform, weapons, and training manuals of the Regular Army, the better to achieve credibility in Washington. A series of laws in the first sixteen years of the new century brought the guard firmly into its role as the nation's second line of defense, after the regu­ lars.^ Thus, when the army sought to cast itself as a school for citizenship, the guard struck back through a bill sponsored by New Jersey Sena­ tor Joseph Frelinghuysen proposing that the guard be the agent of universal military train­ ing. No need to force young men out of their homes and into army camps. Instead, let them learn soldiering at the local high school, and let their neighborhood National Guard offi­ cers be their teachers.'" In Wisconsin, the Democratic candidate for governor in 1920 was Robert Bruce McCoy, who had remained in command of a home- state regiment until illness forced him into a hospital in the days before the ceasefire. Mc­ Coy told audiences that he opposed peacetime J0*^^i^ conscription by the army but that he sup­ Off-hours activities at summer camp. WHi(X3)40,n91 ported a concept of universal training con­ Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. ducted by the National Guard, "so that every boy reaching the age of nineteen may learn had been set aside while they fought as one the war game that he may be prepared for the force in 1917—1918, re-emerged with a venge­ combat which may come at any time. . . . For ance. As inheritor of the militia tradition, the such preparations I know of no better organi­ guard countered the generals' argument with zations than the Boy Scouts for boys and the its own answer to the preparedness dilemma: National Guard for young men."" expand the citizen-soldier concept which the In this topsy-turvy battle for the hearts and guard embodied, and give the guard a minds of the Congress, generals tried to sell stronger voice within the War Department. the draft by emphasizing the good training for That the National Guard had the audacity civilian life that men would receive while in to climb into the ring with the U.S. Army was uniform, and the National Guard countered evidence of how rapidly it had achieved re­ with identical black-is-white logic, offering to spectability and how effectively it had seized prepare young men for military service by upon the Minute Man image as representative keeping them home. But over the army's pro­ of the American citizen-soldier, whose true posals remained the dread shadow of a power­ history was often troublingly, exasperatingly ful, expensive peacetime military establish­ at odds with that one isolated, if heroic, exam­ ment, while spokesmen for the guard, like Mc­ ple of 1775. The National Guard had its ori­ Coy, managed to conjure a vision of Minute gins in the spontaneous post-Civil War Men trained and available by the millions flowering of military clubs, uniformed social whenever danger threatened.'^ groups, and volunteer militias—strong on '•The .Militia Act of 1903, known as the Dick Bill: the fashion, sport, fancy drill, and social engage­ Militia Act of 1908; the Volunteer Act of 1914, known as ments. As the years passed, these state- the Hay Bill; and the National Defense Act of 1916. sanctioned volunteer militias became a loose '"Dickinson, T/ie Building of an Army, 360-361. '^The Milwaukee Journal, ]anu-dry 5, 1926. confederation with a strong lobby in Washing­ '^That neither the National Guard nor a large slaiid- 86 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS

HILE the National Defen.se erarchy of three armies, nine corps, and a w Act of 1920 was a compromise changing number of divisions and special for­ that rejected both proposals, it also breathed mations with an ultimate peacetime strength new life into the guard and in some ways made of three-quarters of a million men. But the the army subordinate to it. The guard's role as money to raise such a force was never appro­ the second line of defense was strengthened priated, and throughout the next fifteen years and expanded. Its eighteen wartime divisions both the Regular Army and the National were returned to life as peacetime National Guard fielded less than half the manpower Guard outfits, manned top to bottom by authorized by law. Through the mid-1930's guardsmen. Regular soldiers would be train­ their combined strength remained closer to ers, advisors, evaluators, but they would not the prewar, isolationist levels than to the orga­ command. Thus were old state regiments nization envisioned by the law. given new life, and new militia divisions with Regular Army battalions were scattered their Great War records preserved, for it was from Panama to the Philippines. As a shelter the old regiments with new federal designa­ from dust bowl storms, failed businesses, and tions that were the heart and soul of those divi­ other ravages of the Depression, the army sions. Top strength for the army was fixed at had much to offer, but except for experimen­ 295,000. The guard was allowed to gradually tal motorized and tank units, the ground increase to 436,000.'-' There would be no forces remained essentially horse-and-wagon peacetime draft, and guard officers would re­ outfits, updating themselves more through place regular ofhcers within the Milida Bu­ improvisation than acquisition. reau of the War Department.'^ This wide and thin distribution of man­ Under the law, the War Department was to power was duplicated in the National Guard. create a sleeping giant, an ocean-to-ocean hi- Guardsmen wore divisional patches on their shoulders, but their military world was largely ing army was the answer had been a long-standing convic­ confined to platoons and companies. For both tion of many preparedness advocates, including some forces during these years, soldiering meant professional soldiers. An ".American" solution to the pre­ bayonet drill and small-unit tactics played out paredness issue had long been sought. One scheme which on a parade ground or in a coal-fired armory at first held much promise was the 1915 proposal of Secre­ on a winter's night. It was long hours of dress­ tary of War Lindley Garrison for a "(xintinental Army," a large federal force of volunteers who would spend time ing leather and polishing brass for parades on active duty for training, then return to civilian life. It that went unwatched by the outside world. would be a submerged federal army. Unlike some Euio- Depression-era austerity led to innovations pean nations, America would not be overrun with uni­ that saved money but also stripped training of forms and all they represented, but the strength for war its few traditional satisfactions. Instead of fir­ could be quickly recalled from every city and village when needed. C)nce mobilized, these hundreds of thousands of ing expensive live ammunition through their soldiers would flesh out skeleton divisions of the Regular French 75's, artillerymen practiced with the Army. Bishop gun, a miniature field piece that fired But what had appeared from a distance to be the ideal ball bearings. For many machine gunners the solution became unacceptable to nearly everyone when quiver and smoke and exhilarating racket of a examined up close. Though the plan had originally been drawn up in its own War College, the army was cool be­ belt of .30 caliber ammunition whipping cause it wanted peacetime conscription. Preparedness through the breech became a luxurious mem­ groups also felt the plan did not go far entmgh. Labor and ory as they fired nothing more lethal than the business felt that it went too far toward militarizing the beam of a flashlight or .22 caliber rimfires, one nation. And of course the National (iuard, with its many friends in Congress, rightly perceived the (iarrison plan round per trigger squeeze, from a pistol fitted as a threat to its own claim to a major role in the nation's to the breech. '^ On paper these scattered units defense establishment. The C^ontinental ,^rmv died in may have added up to an armed giant, but C'ongress. rattling around in the sprawling boomtown '•'Based on a formula of 800 guardsnien for every sen­ ator and congressman. '''Information about the size and strength of the armv ''Most of the information on improvisations came and the National Guard can be found in Amendments lo from issues of The Wisconsin National Guard Review of the National Defense Actof 1916 (66 (xmgress, 2 session, Wash­ 1930's. The Review was a quarterly magazine for guards­ ington, D.C, 1920), Chapter 1, sections 2, 3, .3a, 4, 81, men. The Infantry Journal of that era also featured train­ Chapter 227, and "Report of Chief of Militia Bureau," ing expediencies and equipment adaptations that War Department Annual Report, 1920, p. 1309. emphasized making do with very little. 87 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 world of the vanished citizen army, they raised monie in the north to Platteville, Monroe, and hardly an echo in the larger communities be­ Beloit in the south.'-' yond. In 1923, as one of only a handful of states to Within two years after the law was passed, exceed its manpower quotas, Wisconsin's the reorganization of the 32nd Division was guard organization seemed well on its wav to a nearly complete. The divisional structure in secure and prosperous postwar existence effect on Armistice Day, 1918, consisted of when suddenly the whole structure was in four regiments of infantry and three of artil­ jeopardy. Bills to sweep the state clean of uni­ lery, plus engineer and other support units, forms were introduced into both houses by for a total war strength of 28,105. Over half socialist legislators from Milwaukee. Whether were infantrymen assigned to forty-eight rifle by starving the guard of funds or repealing companies and ten machine-gun companies.'" the statutes that authorized its existence, these So, to rebuild the 32nd, the adjutant gen­ bills were designed to abolish the state militia. erals of Michigan and Wisconsin each had to Anti-military sentiment was once again strong organize complex pyramids of local compan­ in Wisconsin as across the nation, and the bills ies, regional battalions and regiments, and a attracted wide support. Organized labor con­ state-level infantry brigade headquarters. Ar­ tinued to see the guard as uniformed strike­ tillery, medical, and engineer regiments had breakers and so welcomed efforts to curtail it; to be divided between the two states, plus a Representative Sixtus Lindahl of Superior, a handful of division-level outfits such as mili­ self-proclaimed "rock-ribbed Republican," tary police, tank, and signal companies.'' stressed that his vote was based on a desire to Michigan had concentrated two of its six cut taxes, not out of sympathy for extreme infantry battalions in two cities, Detroit and causes.^" Grand Rapids. Two other battalions were scat­ 'Fhe tone of the debate was set by tered among a number of small towns, and the Lieutenant-Governor George F. Comings: remaining two battalions still mustered only "The way to stop war is to stop preparing for five companies between them."^ war. . . . We are developing in this country a Wisconsin filled all six infantry battalions militaristic class just as Germany did." He be­ by organizing vigorously throughout the state. rated the ROTC program at the University of The battalions of the 127th Infantry mean­ Wisconsin for "spreading propaganda of hate dered the eastern half of the state, frcjm CJOIU- and future wars." Of the National Guard he pany A in Marinette, on the northern shore of said: "The training camps are sinks of immo­ Lake Michigan, to South Milwaukee's Com­ rality. It is as impossible to go to a training pany K, the Polish-American outfit formerly camp and escape as it is to live in a pest house called the Kosciusko Guard, and inland to and escape disease." companies L in Waukesha and M in Fond du An assembly bill to abolish the guard passed Lac. The hometowns of the 128th Infantry, in by acclamation after repeated roll-call votes the west, were islands of commerce in rolling had shown that the bill's supporters outnum­ seas of farmland, from Rice Lake and Meno- bered defenders of the guard sixty-one to sev­ enteen. '"Based on tables of organization and equipment for an infantrv division which were in effect at the end of The guard was saved by a moderate senate World War 1. See 32iid Division: Suiiiiiiaiy of Operations in and by Governor John J. Blaine, who was not the World War, 71. about to preside over the dismantling of the '"The basic building block was the hometown com­ state militia. But the era of boundless support pany, battery (artillery), or troop (cavalrv). Coni|)aiiies and troops required a minimum of fifty enlisted men; was clearly over. State appropriations were cut batteries, thirtv-nine. In Wisconsin, typical hometown by one-third, bringing an end to the steady, units maintained a strength of between sixty and eight\ incremental progress that had been made to­ members. During the Depression, many had waiting lists. ward strength levels authorized bv the 1920 There were four ctmipanies in an infantry battalion, three battalions to a regiment, two regiments to a brigade. In addition to its infantry brigade, Wisconsin maintained two ""Information for this discussion of the 1923 legisla­ artillery regiments, a cavalry regiment, a medical regi­ tive debate over the National (iuard came from the Legis­ ment, and a quartermaster regiment. lative Reference Bureau microfilm files of newspaper "'"Stations of Organizations, " in Official National Guard clippings. Stories quoted are from The Milwaukee Journal. Register for 1922 (Washington, D.C., 1922), 22-23. Februarv 20, 1923, and The Wisconsin News. Februai) I, '•'Official National Guard Register Jor 1922. pp. 22-23. 17, 192.'i. J^

WHi (X;S) 40588 Troops of Wisconsin's I05th Cavalry Regiment riding in review at summer camp. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. law. Manpower also fell by a third. Many units try and horse cavalry were tests of noncha­ were eliminated and others underwent reduc­ lance under duress. Cavalrymen wincing after tions, conversions, and consolidations.-' a trek between Williams and McCoy came upon infantrymen wincing from a cross­ country march. All parties immediately puffed themselves up, moved along with sud­ HROUGHOUT the between- den briskness, and breezily exchanged insults T war years, an average of 4,700 regarding their opposite number's form of lo­ enlisted men spent most of their ninety- comotion and the blisters it produced."^'^ minute weekly drills on age-old subjects which At best, the strength of the 32nd Division had changed only in detail through the was in whatever skills individual members had generations—close-order drill, manual of mastered. Physical conditioning and military arms, marksmanship, weapons assembly, first discipline varied from man to man, and by aid.22 professional standards were uneven at best. Each summer they traveled to Camp Wil­ Small-unit leadership from squad leader liams, a grassy basin surrounded by pine through company commander was untested bluffs and sandstone statuary where Wiscon­ except as reflected in summer-camp exercises. sin militiamen had been training since 1889, The three hundred officers of the Wisconsin and for two weeks they spent mornings in guard had few opportunities to gain practical small-unit exercises, afternoons on the base­ leadership experience. Field-grade officers ball diamond or in other organized athletics. came no closer to the command and staff Some troops also trained at Camp McCoy, the problems they would face in war than the cor­ wilderness of hills and bogs a half hour's drive respondence course workbook and an occa­ to the northwest. McCoy was a federal reserve sional sand-table exercise. which had long served as an artillery range for the army. For latecomers to the commissioned ranks there was no upward mobility in the peacetime Summer-camp encounters between infan-

'"Biennial Refmrl of the Adjutant General of the Slate of Wisconsin, 1922 (Madison, 1922), 7-8; 1924, p. 5. "'lnter\'iew with William Sherman, former officer in '^'^Biennial Reports of the Adjutant General of the Slate of Machine Gun I'roop, 105th (Cavalrv, Eau Claire, June 21, Wisconsin, 1920-1938. 1979. 89 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 guard. In 1939, the ages of the six infantry New York. Fhat summer nearly everyone on lieutenants in the Madison, Marshfield, and Main Street spoke knowingly of "M-Day" and Portage companies, for example, ranged from "selective service." Congress gave President thirty-eight to forty-two. The middle and up­ Franklin Roosevelt the authority to call up the per ranks of the 32nd Division belonged to National Guard, and a few weeks later, as pro­ those officers—mostly Great War veterans— testing mothers in black held a mock death- who had come aboard during the reorganiza­ watch in the galleries, the Senate passed a tion process of the early twenties. Those stuck selective service bill. The administrative ma­ in the junior ranks faced a logjam that did not chinery for the creation of that new army was budge in spite of deaths and retirements. now in place. Even in its role as trainer the army could The training of those millions of soldiers not get its hands on many guardsmen. There would be the responsibility of a general head­ was no period of active duty for basic training. quarters which Marshall had put under the In theory the armv was supposed to put its command of Brigadier General Leslie imprint upon the guard through the medium McNair. The first component of the citizen of its special schools, but while the number army to be called would of course be the Na­ and variety of courses offered was impressive, tional Guard. By July, 1940, McNair and his from the four-month-long horseshoeing staff were settled into offices in the Army War course at Fort Sill to the company officer College on the Potomac. Nationwide maneu­ course at Fort Benning, the actual impact vers involving all the nation's guardsmen were upon the guard was minimal. Few guardsmen scheduled for three weeks in August. In size attended. From 1920-1926 a total of forty- and scope these war games were unprece­ eight officers from Wisconsin attended service dented. While valuable as training exercises, schools, or fewer than one of every six active in they would be even more important as instru­ the state organization. Only six states sent ments for measuring strengths and weak­ more. As late as 1940, the year the guard was nesses of those eighteen National Guard mobilized, only 675 National Guard officers divisions which the law of 1920 had desig­ and 144 enlisted men attended army schools nated as America's reserve army. out of over 240,000 members nationwide.-' The crop sown twenty years ago was about That a great army could be mobilized faster to be harvested. The upcoming maneuvers and more efficiently than the army of 1917- would offer a glimpse of just how good it 1918 had been a major objective of those who would be. had shaped the law of 1920. But the army which Ceneral George Marshall inherited when he formally assumed office as Chief of Staff of the Army on September 1, 1939—the N mid-March of 1940, two officers day Germany invaded Poland—was an ill- I arrived at Camp McCoy fresh equipped force with no experience in provid­ from a briefing at Second Army headquarters ing recruit or specialist training on a large in Chicago, and over the wall of their office scale, very little experience in supplying and they spread a five-by-eight-foot map of the servicing large formations in the field, and few surrounding area. Within days it was overlaid facilities in which to house a sudden influx of with an assortment of township maps embrac­ new soldiers. The applicable experience many ing most of the land over three counties. One career officers brought to their jobs sprang way or another. Lieutenant Colonel William from their assignments as administrators of McCreight and Major Clifford Ollivetti were CCC camps, not from commanding battalions to obtain legal rights to 1,000 square miles of and regiments. central Wisconsin for those three weeks in Au­ gust.^" When their job was done, some local Long before France fell in June, 1940, war citizens might feel they had been taken by was consuming the front pages in Marshfield and Platteville just as it was in Washington and '^'Information regarding McCreight and Ollivetti is from "Final Report of Rents and C^laims Sectitm, Second -'The figures for f920 to f926 can be found in .\niiual Army, September 26, 1940," in Report, Second Army Ma­ Report of the Chief of the MUitia Bureau, 1926, pp. 31-33; neuvers, August, 1940, Volume 11, Record Group 337, Re­ figures for 1940 can be found in Annual Report of the Chief cords of the Army Ground Forces, National Archives, of the National Guard Bureau. 1941, p. 8. Washington. Hereafter cited as Report. SAM. 90 Boarding the train for summer training. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. WHi (X;i) 40592 snake oil salesmen. Others would proudly to take Monroe County's government lands. rank themselves among the first to make sacri­ What they wanted was a legal document giving fices in a time of crisis. Either way, they were the army the right to trespass freely on county no longer likely to see the army as a refuge for land throughout the period of the maneuvers. the lazy and unimaginative, not if these two They got their contract and more—free office men were typical. space in the Monroe County Court House in McCreight and Ollivetti drove civilian cars Sparta. Following the Monroe precedent, and wore civilian clothes. After a week of sit­ Jackson and Juneau counties fell into line. ting across desks from county officials and The local press publicized these agree­ searching for titles in government offices ments, emphasizing that county lands were throughout twenty-five townships, they knew being leased to the army at no cost. Fhrough everything there was to know about the own­ the network of contacts they had established, ership of the land on their map. For every McCreight and Ollivetti and their growing privately held tract they had an owner's name. staff learned of prominent landowners who Every stretch of Indian and government land might be inclined to follow the example set by was color coded. the counties. Having completed their reconnaissance, And so it went. When they submitted their they proceeded to soften up the territory. final report, the two officers would proudly They undertook a month-long public rela­ claim that their strategy of striking deep to tions blitz, leaving in their wake a host of may­ capture the county seats and topple the local ors, sheriffs, banks, editors, service clubs and giants "greatly reduced the money rentals in­ chambers of commerce, all eager to lend a volved" when they took on the legion of small hand. The army is coming and you can help. That landowners. was their message. That central Wisconsin and not the Camp Then they struck. Their first objective was Custer area in Michigan or the Fort Knox area 91 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 of Kentucky was the scene of this high- over and above a playing field of a thousand pressure real estate dealing was the result of square miles would be 46,000 guardsmen and decisions dating back nearly two years, when 14,000 regulars. They would arrive in 106 the War Department allocated $720,000 h)r special trains, thousands of vehicles in over maneuvers in the Second Army area. Late in 200 convoys and 100 war planes gathered 1939 the department designated McCoy as the from coast to coast.'-** site for those maneuvers, a decision that On July 31, the night spots of fomah, added another half million dollars to trans­ Sparta, and Black River Falls filled with hard- portation costs.-'' But the reasons for choosing drinking men in khaki. It was payday for the McCoy over the other two pcjssible locations regular troops whose long convoy of howitzers are unclear. It might have been the terrain, and reconnaissance vehicles had been seen which in microcosm replicated the plains and rolling through Coulee country, up around forests of Europe. Much of the land in the des­ Shamrock. For the next five nights the tills ignated combat zone was rugged, untilled, re­ rang at a pace unmatched since before the mote e\en by the standards of nearby com­ crash of'twenty-nine.--' munities like Black River Falls and Baraboo: Then in mid-August their part-time coun­ mile after mile of red-dirt hills densely cov­ terparts descended. Trains bearing most of ered with pine, of marshes and streams and Ohio's 37th Division converged at a point on occasional straight-up outcroppings of sand­ the map called Warrens. At Wyeville, twenty- stone or hard rock—impossible to go over and three more cars unloaded 38th Division wearying to go around. It was hard to imagine guardsmen from West Virginia, Kentucky, battle, even simulated battle, raging over land and Indiana. A colonel in an "autogyro where for generations the only manmade plane"—a primitive helicopter—directed sounds had been the axe and an occasional brown convoys through a maze of highways shotgun or deer rifle. clogged with sightseers to assembly points at Having taken control of the land, the army Wisconsin Dells and Reedsburg. began in early summer to prepare it for an And on the bright and sweltering after­ influx of nearly 60,000 men. Tons of lumber noon of Sunday, August 11, folks came from and supplies filled the depots of Camps Wil­ as far away as La Crosse to spread picnic liams and McCoy. WPA crews cleared brush lunches on hillsides near Tunnel City and to from wilderness areas to make room for the watch elements of their 32nd Division and Illi­ thousands of pup tents that would blossom nois' 33rd detrain, form up, and march to overnight. They cut roads and surfaced them Camp McCoy under the awesome roar of low- with shale, cut and stacked acres of wood for flying warplanes.'^" field kitchen stoves, poured forms to make ce­ ment floors for officers' tents. Army engineers set up water purification units, strengthened bridges, built railroad sidings and water tow­ N grassy fields for miles around, ers, posted crop lands with "Off Limits" signs, I thousands of amateurs scratched and reinforced roads throughout the area. their heads over mounds of earth-colored can­ The signal corps installed a network of 3,000 vas at their feet. Tent cities went up slowly. telephones. Regimental bands played. Officers and NCO's reeled from meeting to meeting. And at the Early in August provisions for the nearly railheads a handful of quartermaster troops 800 messes began to arrive, the first shipments scrambled to keep their heads above a Hood of of what would eventually total tw elve freight- provisions and baggage. Horses, tanks, artil­ car loads of flour, eighty-five tons of fresh lery pieces, and scout cars awaited claiming. meat, sixteen tons of corned beef, ancl over Of the nearly 5,000 men in the 32nd's camp thirty tons of so-called "army strawberries"— that first day, only six had been assigned to prunes.-' move freight from the train siding to the quar- Never before had Wisconsin hosted an event so vast in scope, so spectacular. Ranging ^""General Plan, Second ,\rm\ Maneuvers," in Refmrl. '-""(ieneral Plan. Second .Armv .Maneuvers." in Report. MA/, Volume 1. S.\.\l. Volume 1. '•'•''TheSfiorla Herald, .August 5. 1940. '^'Wisconsin National Guard Review (\u\\. 1940). 28-29. •'•"The Milwaukee Journal. .\u)!,iis,l 12, 1940, .sec. 6. p. 12. 92 VVlli(X:!l 40599 A marriage that did not work: modern technology mounted on ancient mobility. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. termaster dump miles away. And they had no sota, and Washington state.'^''^ Collected in trucks. The 33rd Division's quartermaster, such numbers, guardsmen generated an illu­ having arrived early to stay on top of develop­ sion of readiness and strength that was quickly ments, found his worst dreams come true. dispelled whenever they took to the rifie range Alone at his division's railhead he watched the or pondered a rope, a peg, and a tent ilap. freight cars collect and could only wonder at Many had never fired their weapons, never the whereabouts of the troops who were to do before been in the field. the unloading.-" The Battle of Britain was on. As Ford Tuesday afternoon. Lieutenant General spoke, intelligence sources in Europe were Stanley Ford, commander of the Second predicting a German invasion within three Army, brought housekeeping activities to an days. Newspapers ran a map of the East An­ end with an address to thousands of assem­ glian peninsula with arrows indicating the in­ bled officers. Ready or not, the games were vasions points chosen by the Wehrmacht high about to begin. command for amphibious assault. Wirephotos showed bombed neighborhoods, home de­ fense troops drilling in parks, stricken planes plunging to earth. T the same time 165,000 more Whether or not the guardsmen sorting A^guardsme n and tens of thou­ themselves out at Wyeville, Warrens, and sands of regulars were gathered for maneu­ Camp McCoy followed these events— vers at camps in New York, Louisiana, Minne- "'"Final Report, VI Army Corps, Camp McCoy, Wis­ '^'^Wisconsin National Guard Review (August, 1940), 3. consin, Second Army Maneuvers, 1940," Section 111, See also Annual Report of the Chief of the National Guard Number 6. G-3 .Annex. National .Archives. Bureau, 1941, pp. 57-59.

93 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

apparently many did not'-'—the German methods destroyed morale on a much wider army had become an almost tangible presence front. Was infantry obsolete? Was there any to their commanders. The generals were defense against the panzer? Until now, the in­ haunted by Blitzkrieg. dustrialization of warfare had favored the de­ The Germans had woven a new generation fense. As the bloodletting of the Great War of weapons to the shock-troop concept which had proven, traditional assaults by massed in­ they had so effectively brought to life in their fantry against barbed wire, machine guns, re­ last offensive of the Great War.-^'' In March, peating rifles, and modern artillery advanced 1918, groups of combined infantry, light artil­ no cause except, arguably, population control. lery, and bombers had been launched through But twenty years later, the west was con­ soft spots in enemy lines, hellbent on overrun­ founded by an army that literally flooded ning his artillery and isolating his infantry in through and around fixed defenses, turning the trenches. Twenty years later the Germans them into tombs for the defenders. The pan­ had moved their obsession with rapid penetra­ zer and the screaming Stuka haunted the tion into another dimension by mounting it on dreams of Germany's enemies. massed motors and air fleets. Commanders The German army was a waking nightmare sitting before wireless radios on the backs of for generals gathered in central Wisconsin trucks orchestrated tank groups, dive who had reason to believe that the young men bombers, and truck-drawn infantry and artil­ they commanded, armed with Great War lery in a wide-open, swift-moving war of ma­ weapons and trained—if at all—in Great War neuver. methods, might shortly face elements of that Western armies paid the price of having army. spent the past twenty years looking backward But there were ways in which those young or merely tinkering with bits and pieces of the men had never had it so good. Not since the future. While they had concentrated on hysteria of 1917-1918 had soldiering been so housekeeping and survival at home—or, like fashionable. Militant patriotism was once the French, on static defense—the Germans again the stuff of hit parade tunes and high had seized upon the future, fusing the war- fashion. In popular magazines uniformed making potential of modern industry to the men vouched for every product from hair same bold concept that had always guided cream to shoe polish. In their advertisements, them: the quick and total annihilation of an makers of automobiles and airplanes featured enemy before he could dig in wdth his allies to both their civilian and War Departments lines, fight a war of attrition. While the bulk of the implying, like the suppliers of marmalade to German army retained the foot- and horse- the Queen, that a company good enough for bound character of all the armies of history, its the American soldier was surely good enough motorized cutting edge became the most so­ for the American consumer. Even army chow phisticated and lethal strike force ever assem­ was in vogue. Organizers of the Milwaukee bled. The results of 1939 and 1940 had been Food Show prevailed upon the army to send a awesome: the slashing penetration and de­ field kitchen from Fort Sheridan. Soldiers struction of Poland, the effortless grab of dished up plates of army beans to an eager smaller nations to Germany's north and west, public. and finally and most spectacularly, the envel­ In fact, it was difficult for young enlisted opment and destruction of the French army, men to see anything to worry about. Congress each campaign decided within days of the ini­ in effect had encouraged them to believe that tial assault. they would be nothing more than uniformed By August, 1940, an aura of invincibility observers, to be called up for only one year surrounded the German army. In addition to and then only to defend the Western Hemi­ destroying opposing armies, the Wehrmacht's sphere. There was no risk in that. They would be guaranteed a warm place to sleep, good ''Based on interviews. Voung, enlisted guardsmen in food, and a few dollars in their pockets until particular seem not to have followed war news closelv, at they returned home to new jobs created by the least not vet. defense contracts pouring out of Washington. "-ijohn Toland. No .Man's Land (New York, 1980), '.'>- 122. See also Len Deighton, Blitzkrieg (New York, 1980), And still alive in the press and in some political 99-110. speeches was that apparition of an America 94 Guardsmen lining up for the kind of chow featured at the Milwaukee Food Show. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. protected by fleets of long-range, high- forward in motors. The infantry attack of technology machines—air and naval—which course must be closely coordinated with aerial it was our special genius to produce and which and mechanized efforts. Failure to achieve would make a large land army unnecessary. this coordination, or to properly evaluate time But in his speech. General Ford told these and space factors will result in disaster." infantrymen to prepare to go to war with the devil himself. This high-ranking spokesman for the army anticipated conflict with Ger­ many. The current defensive posture of the S if to assure the public, and es­ American army was strictly "a temporary mea­ A^peciall y its citizen-soldiers, that sure intended only as a preparation for the the United States, too, was in the process of offensive to follow." In an apparent reference becoming an unstoppable force, the army to the German practice of making war on civil­ packed the maneuvers with displays of all the ians. Ford said that some methods used in Eu­ latest innovations. It had brought in the 5th rope would never be used by Americans: "We Division, a stripped-down assault unit of maintain that the American Army can fight a 10,000 troops in motorized, radio-coordi­ superior and successful war and still remain nated infantry, artillery, and armor elements. American."'^' Like the German mechanized units, it was to penetrate or sweep around enemy lines, drill­ Having established a moral distinction be­ ing directly toward his artillery, lines of com­ tween our army and Germany's, he went on to munication, and defensive fall-back positions. outline the sorts of exercises his listeners were It was to gut the enemy while he was still about to engage in, and in so doing he illus­ stunned from the initial penetration, and it trated how much we were learning from the was to accomplish all this at the risk of severing Germans tactically. In the jargon of the train­ its own lines of supply. Fhus it fueled in the ing manuals. Ford described blitzkrieg Ameri­ field and treated its own water, continuing to can style: "Many of the operations in these move and inflict punishment independently. maneuvers will feature the cooperation of But, unlike similar German groups, it was light bombardment scjuadrons, mechanized weak on armor. The United States had just be­ units, and motorized infantry, all cooperating gun to play catch-up. Locomotive factories in offensive missions. Bombardment aviation were being converted to tank production, and and mechanized units will endeavor to pin the whole new factories were being built, but it enemy to the ground, while infantry is rushed would be years before significant numbers of tanks and armored artillery came rolling off those lines. "''Ford's speech received wide coverage in Wisconsin newspapers. The quotations cited are from The Wisconsin The only true professionals on the scene, State Journal, August 14, 1940. p. 11. the 5th, had staked a claim to an area near

95 (;ourtesv Robert B. Immcll Elbow-bending was not confined to the regular army: Captain Leo G. Peterson (left) and (Colonel EdwardJ. Gehl. later a Wisconsin Supreme (jiurl justice (second from left).

Shamrock, an aloof distance from the four my's new' semi-automatic rifle had appeared in guard divisions clustered around Camp Mc­ the Wisconsin National Guard Review.-'" Now the Coy. It was these men who, two weeks ago, had guardsmen finally laid eyes on the weapon it­ squandered a small fortune in local road- self. Regular Army NCO's demonstrated the houses and honky-tonks. M-1 to small groups in the field. The army had Selected National Guard units received in­ begun work on semi-automatic rifles in 1901. tensive training with the new 37 millimeter Thirty-five years passed before a model was anti-tank gun, a weapon still in short supply adopted. Even in 1940, however, only 300 M-l's among regular units, and then tested their were coming ofl assembly lines daily. The skill against elusive silhouettes that zigzagged Springfield Armory would soon up that num­ across the range at up to twenty miles per ber to 500, but even at that rate it would take hour. That General Marshall in particular and three years to re-arm all eighteen National the high command in general knew the gun Guard divisions, to say nothing of the far was a lemon remained a well-kept secret.•*'' In greater army of conscript divisions to follow. '** battle the 37 millimeter would quickly confirm The manufacturers of sporting weapons must what knowledgeable professionals already be signed on to help out. But like training sol­ suspected: it lacked the punch to do the job. diers, making tanks, and every other aspect of But the important thing was to convince building an army, converting production American soldiers that enemy tanks were vul­ from shotguns and hunting rifles to high- nerable: they could be killed, ancl, contrary to powered automatic rifles would take time. the scare stories out of Europe, infantry In their ongoing war with Finland, the Rus­ equipped with anti-tank guns could do the sians had successfully used smoke screens to killing. cover assaults, so smoke demonstrations were Five years earlier a photograph of the ar- also added to the schedule in the armv's eager-

'"'Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer ofVic- '^''Wiscon.sin National Guard Revieic (November. 1935), ton-(New York, 1973). 136.' 9. 96 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS ness to expose guardsmen to as many ele­ who, through neglect or ignorance or no fault ments of modern warfare as possible in three of their own, found themselves alone in the weeks. woods. Finally, the war in Europe made obsolete Fifty years earlier the mounted cavalry the old artillery concept of saturation bom­ would have been the main attraction at such bardment, in which whole geometric sections an event. But these days the two horse cavalry of land were churned up in rolling barrages. brigades at the maneuvers waited uneasily in Bodies of troops were too elusive and fast- the background while tanks and planes liter­ moving in the new warfare, the battleheld too ally stole their thunder. At least for the first fluid. "Concentration of fire" was the new week or so there was not much for the horse catch phrase. It required complex computa­ soldiers to do—tend horses, swim in the La tions, high levels of skill, and the capacity to lay Crosse River spillways, perhaps ride out on an down fire rapidly on a succession of targets occasional patrol. They were a prime source of while remaining prepared to move out fast if manpower for the work details everyone else necessary. was too busy for, like gathering firewood for While these innovations shared the lime­ the kitchens. Ralph Immell, Wisconsin's adju­ light, guardsmen still had the look and equip­ tant general and a long-time National Guard ment of Great War doughboys. Uniforms cavalry officer, had returned from observing varied from company to company, and some Regular Army maneuvers down South full of still wore old-style puttees instead of the new optimism about the future of the cavalry: canvas lace-up type. Instead of helmets, most "Horse cavalry is not outmoded and a modern wore felt campaign hats of the Boy Scout vari­ army w ill have a substantial corps of horse cav- ety, with brims crushed, rolled, or in other alry."'^'* (Immell was also predicting, "No ways molded to fit a man's vanity. Machine American soldier will ever again participate in gun carts of the heavy weapons companies a war in the Eastern Hemisphere.") and communication carts of the signal units But in spite of the relentless optimism of were soldier-powered. Two men labored at Immell and other old timers, the War Depart­ rickshaw stations up front, and in mud or on ment's messages regarding the role of horse up-grades, others pushed from behind the cavalry in modern war were ambiguous at wooden-spoke wheels. best. On the one hand, the army was buying The greatest need of most guardsmen was more horses than ever and trying out com­ hard training in old fundamentals. Thus their bined horse and mechanized units.'" On the first days were spent on combat ranges where other, everyone knew that no U.S. cavalry had infantrymen moved out in cautiously advanc­ been used in the World War, and that Wiscon­ ing ranks, firing 1903 Springfields at fixed sin cavalrymen had been converted to artillery targets and at the sudden pop-up variety that troops. Many suspected that once again their were an unexpected test of their reactions. days as horse soldiers were numbered.*' Machine gunners flailed away at truck-drawn Troopers who traced their lineage back to the tank silhouettes. Mortar crews lobbed shells at high-born dandies of the Light Horse Squad­ unseen machine gun nests, and artillerymen ron who had escorted Civil War luminaries to zeroed in on both fixed emplacements and the Soldiers and Sailors convention in Milwau- moving targets that simulated enemy trans­ port. Guard units which for years had been •*^For a brief history of the development ot tlie M-1 ammunition-poor now blazed away in a dawn rifle, ,see Constance McLaughlin (ireen, H. C Thomson, and P. C. Roots, The Ordnance Department: Planning Muni­ to dusk crescendo reminiscent of the Western tions for War {YJashington. D.C. 1955), 176-177. Front. '^'^Wisconsin National Guard Review {]u\y, 1940), 11. While some infantry battalions were on the ^*^Geoffrev Perrett, Days of Sadne.ss, Years of Triumph {Baltimore, 1974), 84. See also L?/^ (April 21. 1941). 8(^ firing line, others moved into the hills on field 93. problems that tested their ability to maintain *'Jim Bliss, a member of Eau CMaire's Machine (km lines of advance in the wilderness. Time and Troop, 105th (^avahy Rej^iment. was not one of these. As again, squads separated from platoons, indi­ a new second lieutenant he had just laid out a small for­ viduals from squads, and umpires with white tune for saddle, boots, breeches, and hat. During the war games Bliss and his platoon were attached to the Regular hatbands materialized to chew out sergeants, Army's 14th C^avalry Regiment, which was known for its lieutenants, and those wandering privates great horses, including the Olympic jumper, Dakota. His 97 Courtesy Rot>ert B. Ininiell The 135th Medical Regiment undergoing inspection.

kee gloomily bided their time, awaiting the move by four abreast, 5,000 infantrymen in proclamation that would motorize, mecha­ precise blocks, then row after row of truck- nize, and machine tool them into the twentieth drawn howitzers and anti-tank guns. For peo­ century. They did not look forward to the con­ ple whose exposure to the military had been version. Late in the first week, the 54th Cav­ limited to Fourth of July parades down Main alry Brigade (Ohio and Kentucky) passed in Street, or to sewing patches on tunics, it was review at the I'omah Indian School, over a hard to imagine such strength in a whole thousand strong. It was their last review on army. Also parading past the visitors' stand horseback. that day was the 32nd Division, the Wisconsin and Michigan troops marching together in re­ view for the first time since General Pershing had reviewed the division in Dierdorf, Cier- few days later, on Sunday, Au­ many, twenty-one years before. A gust 18, the 5th Division—the The men of the 32nd had already engaged wave of the future—passed in review at Camp in their first scrimmage, which ended under a McCoy's old air field. Wisconsin Governor Ju­ lightning-webbed sky as the two infantry regi­ lius Heil and guardsmen's families who had ments from Wisconsin, led by the Janesville come for visitors' day saw a thousand vehicles Tank Company, chased the Michigan men across the La Crosse River early Friday morn­ platoon kept up with the regulars through rainy forced ing. Battles had broken out all over late in that marches at night as well as long, blister-producing mara­ first week. Opposing battalions of Illinois' 8th thons during the day, much to the surprise of the 14th's Infantry Regiment, an all black outfit, had also colonel, who was certain that Bliss's horses—to say noth­ ing of his men—would quickly give out. Interview with been noisily engaged in a predawn fight in the James Bliss. Juiy 16, 1982. woods. Observation planes masquerading as

98 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS

dive bombers screamed down ahead of the at­ ment, arriving at the 32nd's rear undetected tackers, and smoke boiled out of the de­ until shortly before their attack. All the last- fenders' lines, covering their withdrawal for a minute fireworks obscured the point. In real­ counterattack. Similar conflagrations—each ity, the Illinois division had outfoxed the contrived to incorporate unique tactical 32nd.43 problems—lit up the hills and flatlands all To the northeast the two divisions from the around. east were also at war, a lopsided affair in which After the parade on Sunday the seasons the Ohioans of the 37th struggled to save face seemed to change overnight, as if the weather after being overrun on three sides and nearly had been enlisted as a prop in the war games. losing their commanding general to attackers From dog days to October monsoons, from a from the 38th who had waded hundreds of gritty week of withering heat, red dust and yards through a swamp. mosquitoes to leaden skies, ceaseless rain, gray Later the 32nd and 33rd teamed up to bat­ and sodden fields. As troops took to the field tle the 5th Division. The regulars stunned the next morning they were grateful for the over­ inexperienced militia divisions with compli­ coats which until then had been useless bag­ cated covering maneuvers, falling back to a gage. One West Virginian remarked that back series of delaying positions among the hills home even the birds were not allowed out in south of Shamrock. The highlight was a such weather. spooky midnight shoot-out between Wiscon­ The schedule called for more and bigger sin artillerymen and enemy scout cars near the wars, each succeeding battle directed from a Webster Valley School. higher level of command and involving more Elsewhere in the world, British forces were men, more complex tactical and logistical retreating from Italians in Somaliland as the problems.'^ British Navy convoyed tanks and fighters Those new to the field were discovering around the Horn to North Africa. Roosevelt that the solutions to such problems all too of­ signed the bill authorizing the call-up of the ten involved night marches from areas made National Guard. George Marshall estimated hvable only after long hours of effort to cold, that an army of 4,000,000 was needed to de­ wet, thoroughly unlivable areas miles away. fend the Western Hemisphere. Leon Trotsky After a day of eating from the backs of trucks was bludgeoned to death by a Russian agent in and napping in tents, waiting to be fed into the Mexico City. Chrysler and Ford both broke battle that everyone believed was shaping up ground for huge defense plants near Detroit, in front of their lines, most of the 32nd's infan­ one to produce tanks, the other airplane en­ trymen found themselves making just such a gines. But in central Wisconsin that week, the night move. But they were rushing in the op­ divisions of the Second Army fought for con­ posite direction, and they arrived just in time. trol of Purdy Valley Ridge, Trout Falls, Nor­ Where attackers from Illinois expected to find way Tower, Tunnel City, and a scattering of sleeping support troops and untended guns, pastoral schools with names like Pine Grove, they ran into mined bridges, tank traps, artil­ Watermill, Indian Village. lery fire, and battalions of wide-eyed riflemen. It was the clash of arms that the reporters When umpires flagged an end to "The Battle and most participants followed closely. Com­ of the La Crosse River" at 7 A.M., the word bat was what this gathering was all about: who went through the lines of the Wisconsin and won, who lost. But army observers were con­ Michigan men that they had outsmarted the cerned with more prosaic things. I hey looked 33rd, had whipped them soundly. for organizational competence. The moves The army saw it differently. The 33rd had leading up to battle were often of greater im­ done its job. While its cavalry kept the 32nd portance to them than the battle itself. How occupied in front, Illinois infantrymen were well did an organization execute fundamental being trucked in a ten-mile encircling move- moves and sustain essential services? Did re­ connaissance forces keep constant tabs on the ^^"Final Report, VI Army Corps, Camp McCoy, Wis­ enemy or lose touch and have to grope? Were consin, Second Army Maneuvers, 1940," and "Final Re­ port, Chief Umpire, Second Army Maneuvers. 1940." ^'"Final Report, VI Army Corps, (^amp McCoy, Wis­ Record (iroup 337. Records of the Army (^round Forces. consin, Second Army Maneuvers, 1940," Section 111, National Archives. Number 10, G-3 Annex, National Archives.

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the means of communication, from radio to ries. They had been held in reserve and were runners and pigeons, used properly? Were glad of it.'^ messages accurate and precise? (Many dealing Throughout the mock-combat, umpires with locations of forces failed to include map ran interference between combatants, flag­ coordinates.)''* Did staff officers utilize infor­ ging areas under artillery fire, penalizing mation correctly in planning moves against units for tactical blunders, and designating the the enemy? Did big units stick to schedules dead, wounded, and captured. They tried to and coordinate with each other? When rou­ keep warring units a hundred yards apart to tine means of supply failed, who took respon­ avoid risk of injury from blank ammunition sibility for coming up with another way? and, more practically, to head off the massive Where were troop commanders in relation to brawls that were always a risk when opponents their men? Did their soldiers exhibit basic came within each other's reach. But thev were skills and discipline in the field?'*'' fallible. When Wisconsin infantrymen insisted that the paper plates they had strewn in the path of enemy armor represented anti-tank mines, the rattled umpire flagged the tanks N a sense, thousands were in the out of action, much to the chagrin of the tank­ I field to test the competence of a ers, who insisted that the plates were garbage. few. Forty years later some of those who were More importantly, the umpire system was fal­ pawns in the experiment could still recall their lible. It and the skimpy allotment of blank am­ frustration at not understanding what was go­ munition often came together to strip the ing on. To Forrest Knox, who viewed the land­ battlefield of any semblance of reality, impos­ scape from the driver's port of a Mae West ing instead a bureaucratic torpor that put tank (so-called for its twin turrets), the weeks young hotbloods to sleep. Anti-tank crews in the field were a constant pummeling of foot were issued three rounds per day, riflemen signals—forward, full speed, stop—from the ten rounds. Inevitably firehghts were brief, tank commander, but as to where they were erupting with a great roar of gunfire that going and who they were fighting, Knox re­ quickly gave way to a cricket chorus of dry mained literally and figuratively in the dark. snaps. Umpires unfurled flags signaling eight Night after rainy night Captain Bill Sherman diff^erent conditions, such as "Blue fire super­ of Eau Claire's Machine Gun Tioop, 105th iority," "Red fire superiority," and so on, but Cavalry, traveled country roads on horseback the most often seen was the white flag, for alongside a lieutenant colonel from a regi­ "Time out." As attackers and defenders went mental headquarters. I hey were looking for into the trees to relieve themselves or command posts but rarely found them. Peri­ stretched in the grass to dream of a cold beer, odically they stopped and scowled over a state the umpires between them compared notes highway map lit by flashlight, then plodded and got on the phone for computations from on, hopelessly lost. As for Marshfield's proud artillery umpires miles away. The encounter old Company C of the 128th Infantry, its sol­ was a dead issue before the verdict was in. diers nursed tender stomachs in idyllic seclu­ Typically, a line that appeared on an opera­ sion while comrades in the 128th whooped tions map as "front" was in reality nothing and hollered and blazed away, chasing Michi­ more than a scattering of companies cut loose gan men across the river. The Marshfield from their armies and wandering in mutual troops were victims of an excess of chokeber- ignorance, bumping and running while um­ pires hastened over the terrain to keep score. When a column of trucks stopped and its sol­ ^^C^ritiqueof the Second Army Maneuvers by Lt. (ien- eral Stanley H. Ford, in "Report. Second Army Maneu­ diers were compelled to jump out and run vers, August, 1940, Volume I." through the brush, they might see the flags •'•'Critique of the Second Army Maneuvers bv Lt. (ien- telling them that this area was under artillery eral Stanley H. Ford, in "Report, Second Army Maneu­ fire, but there were no simulated blasts, no vers. August, 1940, Voluine 1"; "Final Report. VI Army Corps, C-amp McCoy, W'isconsin, Second Army Maneu­ roar and smoke and shaking earth to take vers, 1940," Section 111, Number 10, G-3 Annex, National Archives; "Final Report. Chief Umpire, Second Armv ^''Interviews with Forrest Knox, May 23. 1980. and Maneuvers. 1940." Record (iroup 337. Records of the William Sherman. June 21, 1979: Marshfield Sews Herald. Army Ground Forces, National Archives. August 19, 1940. p. 2.

100 Courtesy Robert B. I in Soldiers practicing small-unit tactics, Camp Williams, 1938 their minds off^the damn umpire with banners For three days, V-shaped formations of and clipboard who was putting them through bombers and fighters circled over Madison all this. '7 and assembled at the municipal airport— At times the civilian world intruded and left heavy B-17's from Caliiornia and Louisiana, the soldiers feeling silly and superfluous. A lighter B-18's and C-34's from Washington farm boy with a shotgun shooed attacking in­ and New York, nearly two dozen P-36 pursuit fantrymen from his father's melon patch. An planes from all over. artillery barrage was delayed while officers The airmen were received like movie stars. dickered with an Indian woman in a farm­ Local papers described their billets at the East house which was supposed to be under fire. High gymnasium, the menus planned for Ohio engineers came across a couple on the them, their daily routines. For the U.S. Army road who were minutes away from becoming Air Corps, which was engaged in a recruiting parents for the twelfth time. war with the navy and marines, it was great publicity. The Madison chapter of the Vet­ erans of Foreign Wars was granted a parking HILE these battles were un­ concession at the airport, where 40,000 spec­ w derway, new forces gathered tators were expected on the weekend. Plans for the final showdown. On Tuesday, August called for flights of up to thirty-six planes. 22, passengers aboard the riverboat Black They would form up over Madison before Hawk, which was headed down the Mississippi heading north to the biggest engagement of to Prairie du Chien, puzzled over the antics of all, the Battle of Wisconsin. pilots who peeled their bombers out of forma­ Ground forces were divided into two corps tion and came thundering low over the water. of 30,000 men each. Ihe Blues, under Gen­ It was no comfort to realize that their boat had eral Campbell Hodges, would attack from a become an impromptu target. theoretical staging area near Milwaukee. The Reds, under General Irving Fish, the Milwau­ kee lawyer who commanded the 32nd Divi­ ^'The Milwaukee Journal, August 22, 1940, p. 21, Au­ gust 25. 1940, p. 4; John U. Ayotte, "Blue Meets Red," in sion, defended along a north-south line /«/fl///n'yc«mo/(November-December, 1940), 546. destined to shimmy back and forth over virtu- 101 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

ally all of the three-county maneuver area had huddled one last time, and the "cease fire" and parts of several other counties. General went out. It was time to get the men out of the George C. Marshall, who the following month weather before they got sick. The battle was would complete his first year as Chief of Staff, called on account of rain. flew in to observe this final phase of the action. During those few days the RAF bombed On Sunday, August 25, Blue armor ap­ Berlin, the Italians bombed Port Said, thejap- peared through rain and fog in a three- anese bombed Chunking, and London was pronged assault along Highways 12 and 16 still braced for daily waves of Luftwaffe and Monroe County Trunk B. General Fish bombers dropping incendiaries. But in central sent the Illinois division in a counterattack, Wisconsin the Air Corps hardly got off the and the battle was on. ground. Only one of nine scheduled flights That night, in another of those inexplicable took off on Sunday, and it had to turn back moves to which they kept falling victim, over without completing its mission. Fog over the 2,000 of the 32nd's infantrymen found them­ maneuver area had grounded the Air Corps. selves pulled out of the combat zone, loaded Instead of presiding over a crowded parking onto three trains at Black River Falls, and sent lot, the men of the Madison VFW found them­ speeding westward through fog-shrouded selves virtually alone in a vast swampy field. hills and over the black Mississippi to Winona, As for the mounted cavalry, it had blown its Minnesota. There they filed out of the Green last chance to vindicate itself. It had lacked the Bay and Western coaches, hauling their gear light touch. Army observers chided the scout through the cold rain to waiting trains of the troops for repeatedly stumbling into combat Milwaukee Road. Then they were off again, with the enemy and losing sight of their pri­ heading eastward this time, through La mary responsibility, which was information Crosse to Camp McCoy. gathering.^*^ Not that a cleaner performance To the army the looping night ride was a would have given them a new lease on life. test of mobility, one phaseof an effort to trans­ Sensing their days were numbered, perhaps port a division at night, by train and truck con­ they preferred to go out fighting.^^ voy, to a new location. But to the soldiers it was another example of what happens when your fate is in the hands of a remote authority. ENERAL Ford's critique spared Nothing made sense, you had power over G no one. This was no time to nothing, nothing was predictable. In itself the nurse illusions. There were too many flies in trip held no danger, but for men huddling in the field kitchens; road maintenance was darkened, rain-swept coaches, it was not hard lousy, and so was the physical condition of the to imagine other fates that could await them men. But his hottest criticism was directed at when commanders in a distant headquarters their leaders. "True leadership cannot be ex­ chose to fling them into the darkness. ercised effectively from a sedan or command Like the soldiers, sleepless farmers along car traversing the highways," he said, "or from the route also pondered destruction, though a tent in a command post. . . . Troops should of a less dramatic sort. A week of constant rain be led, and you should not be content to force was endangering their crops. Corn stalks were them from the rear. . . . Ihe commander, to about to collapse in the soupy ground. Beans exercise superior leadership, must be better and tomatoes spoiled on the vine. To the physically and professionally than his officers south, in Rock County, bridges were washed and men.... A few . . . are not equal lo the de­ out. mands made upon them."^"* Still the rain came down as each side probed the other for weaknesses and a chance to un­ •*'*"Final Report, VI Army Corps, Camp McCoy, Wis­ consin. Second Army Maneuvers. 1940," Section V. para­ leash a killing blow. By mid-day Monday both graph 14b and conclusion b, Ci-3 Annex, Naticmal the Red army and the Blue army had posi­ Archives. tioned strike forces for massive, armor-tipped ^^An article in The Milwaukee Journal, August 30, 1940, assaults. Sixty thousand chilled, thoroughly p. 13, confirmed that the 105th was to be converted to soaked men were strung out over parts of artillery. '"Critique of the Second Army Maneuvers by Lt. Gen­ three counties, poised for Armageddon, when eral Stanley H. Ford, in "Report, Second Army Maneu­ suddenly it was all over. Distant commanders vers. August, 1940, Volume 1." 102 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS

Then, in a statement blurred by diplomatic phrasing, he seemed to attribute the guard's weakness to statehouse politics: "The time has come for the National Guard to submerge it­ self in a common military purpose and not be required to carry the handicap of home-state influence whenever in the federal service." In other words, if an officer can't do the job, he should not have it, no matter who he knows or how he got the position. The issue was an eternal sore point. The National Guard cited statistics indicating how much better qualified its officers were now than before the Great War, and it emphasized that promotions were now determined, in most cases, by selection board. But from the army's point of view, men whose accomplish­ Guardsmen of the 8th Infantry Regiment, an all-black Illinois ments were confined to business, parly poli­ outfit, manning a water-cooled machine gun. tics, the professions, or an accident of birth, still managed to drift into high positions with­ cost in terms of an effective reserve was now out demonstrating an aptitude for military being tallied.'- command. As for the guard, the most extensive and As the shadow of federalization crept over damning criticisms of its performance at all the National Guard, the Regular Army the maneuver sites were not released to the shrugged off its role as indulgent older public. As reports from officers in the field brother. Regular soldiers spoke in sober terms arrived at his desk at the Army War College, that made guard spokesmen like Adjutant General Leslie McNair realized just how big General Immell, for all his good intentions his job would be. The list of National Guard and limited information, sound quaint and deficiencies compiled by his staff included: out of touch by comparison. In his assurances 1. Obviously deficient training of small- that the army would always need mounted units. . . . cavalry and especially that no American 2. Faulty employment of the infantry di­ ground troups would fight in Europe, Immell vision and of Its combat teams. echoed the naive optimism of those purveyors 3. Failure fully to appreciate the purpose of the Minute Man dream who still held that of motor vehicles and exploit their ca- the nations of the world could produce no labilities, force as powerful and intimidating as an army fnadequate reconnaissance and lack of American boys, aroused and raring to go. of contact between adjacent units. In late October, Mayor James R. Law of Madi­ 5. Inadequate support of infantry by di­ son echoed the same sentiment in bidding vision artillery. good-bye to G Company of the 128th Infan­ •'•'•^Leadership problems were not confined to the Na­ try: "If we show enough strength, there will be tional Guard. As the army made its transition from the no need for further effort."''' Such views, in all parade ground to the field, from garrison routine to large-unit combat training, it uncovered leadership prob­ their variations, made for reassuring reading, lems of its own. The big maneuvers held in the South but they did not prepare guardsmen or their earlier in the vear had revealed "lack of basic leadership in families for the hard, unsentimental utter­ many units, and some inept command leadership by offi­ ances of professionals like General Ford. cers in high rank." Marvin A. Kreidberg and Merton G. Henry, History of Military Mobilization in the United States The real problem went back to the lack of Army, 1775-1945 (Washington, D.C:., 1947). 606. "The any requirement that officers and enlisted unfitness for combat leadership of many officers of al! men spend time on active duty to learn their components was a fact well known to the War Depart­ jobs. The battle for universal training had ment. . . . (ieneral McNair frequently expressed the opinion that many officers neither had nor deserved the been fought and lost twenty years ago. Fhe confidence of their men." Kent R. Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer, and Bell I. Wiley, The Organization of Ground Com­ '^^Capital Times, October 22, 1940, p. 6. bat Troops (Washington, D.C, 1947), 48.

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6. Faulty signal communications. T one time or another nearly all of the dazzled young amateurs The list went on.^^ A who participated in the August maneuvers be­ In the late summer of 1940, even after the came familiar with that peculiar combination collapse of the armies of western Europe, the of boredom and anxiety that settles upon sol­ U.S. Army still ranked no higher than elev­ diers when they sweat away the hours in igno­ enth in size, just after Hungary and Turkey.'' rance, waiting for events to explode upon McNair's first task in building that army into them. They had experienced the exhilaration one of the world's strongest was to prepare and terror of the outside man on an ice understrength, poorly trained, inadequately skaters' whip: a general miles away flicks his led, underequipped state militias to take the wrist and they go plunging headlong toward field against the armies of the fascist powers. destruction on a muddy road at night. And That hometown soldiers were a very differ­ some got a feel for the randomness of it all ent breed from the regulars was illustrated by when an umpire breezily pronounced them a minor snafu at the August maneuvers. Word wounded by shrapnel or dead from machine- had gotten back to Marshfield that dairy foods gun fire. were in short supply among the troops. There A few days later they were back home. As wasn't enough butter to go around, and ice leaves colored and drifted down, most Wis­ cream was rarely served. The news hit consin guardsmen had their minds fixed on Marshfield where it hurt. The war games were Louisiana. Fhose late summer weeks were a taking place virtually in the heart of the na­ twilight period in another waiting game. Men tion's dairyland. An indignant town council listened to radio news, scanned the headlines, decided that if the army could not provide the and waited. The army was readying the essentials, then the city of Marshfield would. camps. All that remained was for the Presi­ The next day Mayor George J. Leonhard dent to set the date. Meanwhile, the front showed up bearing gifts for C Company— pages of the local papers continued to detail dozens of pounds of butter, cheese, and ice the piecemeal destruction of London by Get- cream.'''' man bombers, which now came by night. The town fathers may have been motivated It happened during one memorable week as much by opportunism as by outrage. Local in mid-October. In many towns, the armories creameries were big business in Marshfield. had evolved into community centers over the "Marshfield Cheese Week" was coming up in preceding twenty years. People went there to the fall, little paper hats and all. The extra vote, to play basketball or debate local issues, publicity would not hurt. But their response to eat fish and drink beer. In South Milwaukee was probably also spurred by genuine indig­ they went to watch professional wrestling, and nation over the army's insensitivity to the local in Marshfield to dance to the music of Wallv way of life. Bull and his band. But on October 15 those No one heard much from peacetime regu­ buildings reverted to full-time military instal­ lars, and few people cared. They were nomads lations. Men took the federal oath and started and castaways who took unfairness and hard­ through the army's paperwork maze—serial ship as part of the job. But the citizen army numbers, fingerprints, personnel and supply carried with it a tangible burden of public records. They drilled and packed imit gear for scrutiny and public opinion. Present in spirit the trek south. At meal time, long columns of was a community of camp followers— local fellows in uniform emerged from the ar­ mothers, fathers, mayors, and congressmen mories and marched to places like Tony's Cafe who were inclined to quick outrage whenever and The Barstow Eat Shop. they suspected that the army was shortchang­ ing their hometown boys. Community groups assembled gift pack­ ages and sponsored festivities to raise money The episode was a preview of headaches to for unit funds. At the Eagles Club in Milwau­ come for McNair and Marshall. kee, 10,000 people showed up for a farewell ^'•'Greenfield, Palmer, and Wiley. The Organization of dance in honor of the 121st Field Artillery. Ground Combat Troops, 33-34, Governor Julius Heil led the grand march ''^The World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1941 (New York, 1941), 97. with the teen-aged daughter of a guard '"'"MarshfieldNews Herald, August 22, 1940, p. 2. officer, and Milwaukee's young socialist

104 WHi(X3)405'.l3 Artillerymen posing around their field piece, a French 105mm of World War I vintage. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard. mayor, Frank Zeidler, led the singing of "God That morning at the other end of the state. Bless America." For a new recruit like fifteen- Headquarters Battery of the 120th Field Artil­ year-old Wayne Bevirt, it was a great night to lery moved southward through the coffee and be wearing the Red Arrow. bacon smells of old Superior just coming Three mornings later, on Saturday, Octo­ awake. In Chippewa Falls, Battery C of the ber 19, after a nightlong loading detail, 120th paraded through town behind a flag seventy-five trucks of the 121 st left the armory presented to the unit in 1897 by the Women's on Henry Clay Street in Whitefish Bay. The Relief Corps. They crossed the bridge to wait­ French 155's they towed were older than most ing trucks and climbed up into the smell of of the men. Nearly 40 percent of the regi­ army canvas. ment's members were new^ recruits. Many A day after the artillery started south, the were only a year or two older than Bevirt, and, trains followed, sweeping the state clean of like him, drop-outs from Lincoln and Bay most remaining units. South Milwaukee's View high schools. The rate of turnover was Company K of the 127th Infantry Regiment, typical across the state. Many old-timers had known for generations as "The Kosciuszko been separated for medical or family reasons, Guard," marchedoff Sundav night accompa­ while expanded enlistment quotas created nied by shivering majorettes, a girls' band, and openings for newcomers. Young men who a contingent of American Legionnaires that wanted to keep one step ahead of the draft included many Company K veterans of World rushed to "Join the guard and go with the boys War I. Since it was organized in 1874, C^om- you know." pany K had been manned by Poles from South

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Milwaukee. In October, 1940, they were had it he had lost his voice. But a young state second- and third-generation Americans, and senator named Melvin Laird was not disap­ no one had heard from the old country since pointed. He was invited aboard to travel with the Germans had swarmed over it a year be­ the candidate to Wausau. fore. At midday the 123 menof Company C were But recently, non-Poles had begun to infil­ once again the center of attention as they trate the ranks. Milan Miljatovitch was one of marched through town to the Soo Line sta­ ten children of a Serbian immigrant. He had tion. Only after a few^ blasts from the train worked as a gandy dancer, had picked pota­ whistle did men break free from their families toes and topped beets out west, hopping and climb aboard. freights from job to job, but wise as he may have been in the ways of the world, he was naive in the ways of the military. He wandered HERE was no small-town gaiety into the South Side Armory expecting to sign T in the march time beat of the up for the artillery, which happened to be on drum and bugle corps that escorted the the north side. By the time he got his direc­ eighty-six men of Madison's Company G— tions straight, a sergeant had convinced him "The Governor's Guard"—late that after­ that unless he wanted to spend the next year noon. They marched from the armory on polishing howitzer barrels with a toothbrush, Market Place, around the domed magnifi­ he had better sign up for the infantry. Like cence of the capitol with its statuary, and clown other young men who had been unable to find West Washington to the station. Shortly after steady work in industry, Miljatovitch wel­ six, their three coaches slid out of the un­ comed this one-year call-up as a bridge to just earthly glow of floodlights, leaving behind such ajob. Already army trucks were rolling scattered boxes of Mel-O-Cream donuts— off Chevrolet assembly lines in Janesville. In courtesy of the VFW auxiliary—and 5,000 Milwaukee, the Briggs and Stratton and J. I. townspeople who had come to say good-bye. Case plants were turning out artillery shells. Among them were men who in recent days Motor launches for the navy were built in had been screened out of the company, and to Sturgeon Bay, blankets woven for the War De­ them, the lucky ones were those bright-eyed partment in Chippewa Falls and West Bend. guys crowding the train windows. More and bigger defense contracts were pre­ In still another march the next morning. dicted, and with them, boom times and full Captain Bill Sherman led Battery D of the res­ employment for guardsmen returning after urrected 126th Field Artillery to the station in their year of active duty. Eau Claire. On an autumn day twenty years But tonight Miljatovitch and the rest of earlier Sherman had watched newly arrived Company K climbed aboard coaches from a cavalry mounts flow noisily beneath the win­ streamliner called "The Challenger," where dow of his homeroom in Eau Claire High and they were greeted by Companies F from She­ had discovered that his life was forever boygan and H from Oshkosh. To pass his en­ changed. Years later, back in Eau Claire High trance physical, one man from Company K as a science teacher, he recruited students for had all his upper teeth pulled in one sitting Machine Gun Troop, had led them into the and a false plate fitted the next day, a feat that Frederic Remington world of twilight patrols brought him instant notoriety within the com­ down bridal paths laced with the smell of pine. pany. But shortly after leaving the station he Reconnaissance was their job, but at times they lost his famous plate out one of the Challeng­ might also be called upon to provide fire sup­ er's windows, sick from high excitement and port to cover the infantry's flanks. The ma­ contraband booze. chine gun had become an almost mystical The next day in Marshfield, Wendell instrument, and like all units equipped with it, Wilkie's campaign train stopped at the North Machine Gun I roop concentrated on turning Western station, but there was no speech, no the vagaries of indirect fire into a science, each kiss for the pretty young Cheese Week repre­ gunner fine tuning his touch so that he could sentative. The candidate appeared just long quickly tap the weapon a specific number of enough to wave to the crowd. Wilkie was to "mils" (a mil equalled one yard on a horizon speak in Milwaukee that evening, and rumor 1,000 yards distant) and thus lay down accu-

106 DOHERTY: BLITZKRIEG FOR BEGINNERS rate fire on widely scattered targets, both visi­ disappeared into the train, leaving his lieuten­ ble and hidden. But whatever their ants to hustle the troops aboard. Then he gave proficiency with weapons, it was the horses the high sign to the conductor. Well before the that drew the spectators and the recruits. Each dazed townspeople knew what was happen­ squad worked on a noisy, blazing, tour-de­ ing, the train began to move. A clean get-away, force drill that brought together their skills as Sherman exulted; no overlong good-bye horsemen and marksmen—a hundred-yard, clinches; no maudlin, shaken-up soldiers. tight-formation gallop that ended with men Gone before the gloom could set in. But sud­ and guns separating from horses and coming denly the train jerked to a halt. Sherman together on the ground, the gunner unloosing leaned to the window. On the platform two a burst into the earth as a finale. Fhere was uniformed men were moving on a sea of something about the sound of a machine gun hands and shoulders. He had almost gotten squad going by at a gallop that electrified a away ahead of some of his men.''*' crowd. Partly it was the usual soundtrack The southward-flowing truck convoys and thunder of tight-packed hooves, but there was trains carrying 32nd Division soldiers from a clatter and crash of metal as well, and the Wisconsin collected twenty-four rifle compan­ orchestration of those sounds with a snap vi­ ies, five regimental bands, three regiments of sion of grimacing, dust-eating troopers bent artillery, a quartermaster regiment, medical low over a blur of mane had a way of perking companies, a Military Police company, and a people up, as if convincing them that by God variety of headquarter companies and other the nation was well defended after all. At the units: a total of 7,377 soldiers. In four days Kiwanis Fair and the Bit and Spur Club show they were all gone from the state. From Michi­ and the July 4 exhibition at Menomonie they gan came an equal number of infantry outfits put on this display and more—Roman riding, plus signal, ordnance, engineer, and more pony-express races, mounted wrestling, Cos­ medical units—another 4,428 soldiers. Alto­ sack riding. gether 153 hometown units from both states But all that was behind them, and Sherman went south with the 32nd.'" had already led his troops up to the artillery Also about to descend upon the camps and battery in Chippewa Falls, their old softball sedate metropolises of the South were many rival, to meet their new mistress, the 75 milli­ thousands more midwestern guardsmen who meter howitzer. Even mounted on had been called up in the same increment. For pneumatic tires and dressed in army green many, their routes roughly paralleled Huck she was the same old French loudmouth that Finn's travels down the Mississippi a century Wisconsin cavalrymen had fired twenty-two earlier. Like Huck, most were about to begin years ago. Sherman's men were not im­ their educations in the world. pressed. The 32nd Division's first death was a dis­ Now, lacking both horses and guns, they patch rider named Donald George Henry, stepped along to the high-school band's rendi­ from Wisconsin Rapids. The day after his tion of "On Wisconsin." Classes had been dis­ unit left home, Henry's motorcycle collided missed in their honor, and the student body with a car in Ripley, Tennessee. Nearly five lined their route. The soldiers would miss the years later the division would suffer its last school's production of "Our Town" scheduled violent death in the green hills of Luzon, in the for the next two days. Philippines. Sherman was not about to fall into the trap that had snared his colleague. Captain Mar­ '•"The mobilization week section is based on interviews shall G. Lassekof B Company, 128th Infantry, with Wayne Bevirt, Milan Miljatovitch. and Williain Sher­ who had been mobbed at the station yesterday man; on newspaper accounts of this period in the tiome- by tearful parents coercing still more last min­ town papers of the units mentioned; and on news items in The Milwaukee Journal and The Wisconsin National Guard ute assurances. Sherman did not linger on the Review. platform, over which thousands of emotional "^^^ Annual Report of the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, civilians were already swarming, but quickly 1941, appendix H.

107 The Minus First Meeting of the American Astronomical Society Williams Bay, Wisconsin, 1897

By Donald E. Osterbrock

N January, 1985, the American As­ nomical Society (or Astronomical and Astro- I tronomical Society held its 165st physical Society of America) meeting, it may meeting in Tucson, Arizona. The University be called the minus first.' of Arizona was the host institution, but the The conferences, and the dedication, were meeting was too large to be held on its campus. organized by George Ellery Hale. He was only Instead, it took place in the Convention Cen­ twenty-four years old, two years past gradua­ ter in downtown Tucson. Over 1,200 mem­ tion from the Massachusetts Institute of Fech- bers registered, and 750 scientific papers were nology, when he and President William presented. It was a far cry from the first meet­ Rainey Harper of the new University of Chi­ ing of the society, then called the Astronomi­ cago persuaded Charles F. Yerkes in 1892 to cal and Astrophysical Society of America, held pledge the money to start the observatory. It at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis­ was to include the "largest and best" telescope consin, in September, 1899. Fhat meeting, at in the world, a 40-inch refractor. 4 he Chicago which the society officially came into existence, street-railway tycoon would settle for nothing was attended by fifty astronomers, who pre­ less. Fhe newspapers held a field day, suggest­ sented twenty papers in all. At the time it was ing that Yerkes w ould use the telescope to find called the Third Conference of Astronomers new right-of-ways on Mars, since he had al­ and Astrophysicists. It followed the Second ready taken over all of them on Earth. This Conference of Astronomers and Astrophysi­ was intended as humor, but the editorialists cists, held at Harvard College Observatory in were serious when they wrote that the Lick 1898. There the sessions for papers were held Observatory's 36-inch refractor, then the larg­ in the drawing room of Director Edward C. est in the world, would "shortly be licked," and Pickering's residence. That meeting, at which that the new 40-inch would confirm "(Chica­ a committee was set up to organize the societv, go's destiny to be great."'-' can in turn be traced back to the scientific con­ At first everyone assumed the observatory ferences held at the dedication of Yerkes Ob­ would be located on the very new University of servatory in October, 1897. Those confer­ Chicago campus. A site in nearby Washington ences represent the first national astronomy 'fW. J. Husseyl. Astronomical and Astrophvsical Soci­ meeting in the United States, and since it was etv of America, Organization and Membership, in Publi­ two meetings before the first American Astro- cations of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America. I: 1 (1910). AUTHOR'S NOTE: 1 am grateful to the (Cambridge Uni­ ^H. Wright. Exf)lorer of the Universe: A Biography of versity Press for permission to incorporate brief sections George Ellery Hale (New York, 1966), is an excellent account from my recently published hooY. James E. Keeler, Pioneer of liislifeand accomplishments. Fhe newspaper reactions American Astrophysicist, and the Early Development of Ameri­ are from the 67i;rrt^(> 7V/7)(a(/', October 12. 13, 14. 16, 1892, can Astrophysics, in this paper. and Chicago Daily News. Oclobcr 13. 1892.

108 /^n^mmT^ «.« ^^

Yerkes Observatory staff and visitors, August, 1898. Seated at rear (left to right): Ernest F. Nichols, Dartmouth; Harry M. Goodwin, M.I.T.; E. E. Barnard; Edwin B. Frost; George Ellery Hale. In front: Ferdinand Ellerman; Frank Schlesinger, Columbia; John A. Parkhurst; George W. Ritchey; Allen L. Colton, University of Michigan. Park was seriously considered. However, pro­ decade later Hale was to move to California fessional astronomers knew the telescope and found Mount Wilson Observatory.' would be wasted so near the low, hazy, smoky Most of the proposed sites were in Illinois, Lake Michigan shoreline."^ Harper heeded including Elgin, Kankakee, Marengo, Peoria, their advice and solicited inforination on bet­ Rockford, and Waukegan. Yerkes' private sec­ ter prospective sites. He and Hale received in­ retary particularly favored Eagle's Nest Bluff', vitations or proposals for twenty-seven in Oregon, on the Rock River, "one of the possible locations. The furthest afield came highest points" as well as "one of the most pic­ from members of the Pasadena Board of turesque locations in the State of Illinois.""' Trade in California, urging that Yerkes Ob­ Hale wanted to put the observatory at Lake servatory be built in the Sierra Madre range Forest, north of Chicago, but that "deal" just north of their town. They believed that (Harper's word) fell through because the nec­ "due to the steadiness of our atmosphere the essary land was not offered to the university. meteorological conditions would permit of Highland Park, also on the North Shore, and better resuhs being obtained from the location Hinsdale, west of Chicago, were also consid­ of the telescope in our Mountains than in any ered very seriously.*' other part of the country." One of the board of trade members even pinpointed the exact lo­ ^W. U. Masters and W. Wotkvns to Harper, [anuarv cation as "Observatory Peak" on Mount 18, 1893; W. H. Knight to Hale, januarv 19. 1893. all in Wilson. Actually, the University of Chicago LBT: Hale to W. H. Knight.. Januarv 26, 1893. Mount Wilson and Las (^ampanas Observatories Librarv (hereaf­ trustees never considered any site farther than ter cited as MW'O): George F. Hale. "The Yerkes Observa- a hundred miles from their city, but only a torv of the LIniversitv of (Chicago. I. Selection of Site." in Astrophysical journal. 5: 164 (1897). J. A. Parkhurst to Hale. January 19, 1893; W. F. Fur- •'J. C. Hamson to W. R. Harper. Januarv 12. 1893; S. beck to Harper, March 15.March 23, 1893;S. l.CUoverto Newcomb to fiarper. March 6. 1893; ]. E. Keeler to Harper, March 21, 1893; W. Heckman to Harper. March Harper. March 6. 1893. in Letters of the Board of Frust- 23, 1893. allin LBT. ees. Special (x)llections, Regenstein Library, Universitv of ''Hale to Harper,January 4.January 15, 1893. in LB T; Chicago (hereafter cited as LBT). Harper to Hale, January 9, 1893, in Yerkes Observatory 109 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

HE only site proposed in Wiscon­ not present a problem, and the last remaining T sin was at Williams Bay, on objection was overcome. Hale and the presi­ Lake Geneva in Walworth County, approxi­ dent visited the proposed site in mid-March mately midway between Chicago and Madi­ and considered it the "most beautiful" one son. John Johnston, Jr., a wealthy Chicago real they had seen. Within a few days. Harper and estate operator who owned large tracts of land Martin A. Ryerson, president of the Board of around Williams Bay, offered to donate fifty Trustees, decided definitely on Williams Bay, acres for the observatory. As university prop­ partly because it was "essentially a Chicago erty it would be completely free of taxes, he location,"—the summer home of many wrote Harper; and, as an addiUonal advan­ wealthy Chicago families. Ryerson himself tage, "[i]t may be taken for granted that any and Charles L. Hutchinson, another trustee, legislation that may be desired from the legis­ were to establish mansions there within the lature may be had easier & cheaper in Wis- next few years.^ [consin] than in Illinois. And the placing of One cold December day in 1893, Harper, this great improvement in Wis[consin] will Walker, Johnston, Burnham, and university certainly appeal to state pride & be an advan­ architect Henry Ives Cobb walked over the tage in that respect to the new university [of ground at Williams Bay with Edward E. Ayer, Chicago] in many ways."'' George C. Walker, a a wealthy Lake Geneva friend of the univer­ University of Chicago trustee who had a home sity, and picked the exact spot where the ob­ on Lake Geneva, strongly recommended the servatory would be built. The actual work site, as did Thomas C. Chamberlin, the former went very slow4y at first."* Money was hard to state geologist of Wisconsin and former presi­ come by, and although Yerkes had committed dent of the University of Wisconsin, who had himself to pay for the building and telescope. been lured to Chicago to head its Geology De­ Hale and Harper had great difficulty in rais­ partment. Chamberlin recommended Lake ing additional funds for astronomers' salaries Geneva for the "delightful nature of the situa­ and auxiliary instruments for their research. tion, the surrounding high hills, clear crisp at­ Their appeals to the wealthy Chicago colony mosphere without fogs and vapor, absence of of businessmen with Lake Geneva summer manufacturies, no night or Sunday trains, homes went largely unanswered." easy access to Chicago, . . . resort for the Finally, toward the end of May, 1897, the choicest people of Chicago,. . . and the atten­ 40-inch telescope was at last completed. The tion that will be directed to the University of lens was delivered at Yerkes Observatory in Chicago because of that."^ the custody of Alvan G. Clark, its maker, and Williams Bay met all the criteria recom­ was mounted in the telescope the next dav. mended by the astronomers, and the only That night was cloudy, but the following day worry was whether the nearby lake would Harper and a delegation of trustees, faculty cause fog, clouds, or poor "seeing" conditions. members, and friends came out from Chicago Sherburne W. Burnham, the renowned dou­ to see the first light through the telescope. It ble star observer who was to be a volunteer was partly clear that evening, and they all mar­ member of the Yerkes Observatory staff, had veled at the huge, bright image of Jupiter. Af­ worked for a year at the University of Wiscon­ ter the guests left. Hale and astronomer sin's Washburn Observatory on Lake Men­ Edward E. Barnard observed several other ob­ dota. He had tested the Mount Hamilton, jects, giving the lens a more critical test. They California, site for Lick Observatory before its found it fully up to specifications.'-' 36-inch refractor was erected there. Now Burnham gave his opinion, based on his expe­ ''Hale to Warner and Swasey. March 21, 1893, in rience at Madison, that Lake Geneva would MWO; Harper and M. A. Ryerson to the Board of Trust­ ees, [March. 1893], in LBT; Ann Wolfmeyer and Mary Burns (iage, Lake Geneva: Newport of the West, 1870—1920 Archives (hereafter cited as YOA); Hale to W. Warner (Lake Geneva, 1976). and A. Swasey, February 24, 1893, in MWO. ^^^Lake Geneva Herald. December 8, 1893; Burnham to 'W. H. Hammersley to Harper, February 2, 1893; J. Hale, December 9, 1893, July 9. 1894, in YOA. Johnston to Harper, February 8. Februarv 24, 1893, all in "E. E. Ayer toj. Johns[t]on, October 30, 1894; C. T. LBT. Yerkes to t. W. Goodspeed, April 3, 1894; Hale lo '^G. C. Walker to Harper, February 17, 1893, in LBT; Harper, February 26. 1895, all in LBF. T. C. Chamberlin to Hale, January 31, 1893, in YOA. ^'^Williams Bay Observer, UA\ 19. May 27, 1897; Hale lo 110 OSTERBROCK: MINUS FIRST MEETING

rather than a saboteur that caused the crash. On the morning of May 29, just a few hours after Barnard and Ferdinand Ellerman, his assistant, had left the dome at the end of the night's work, the giant elevator-like wooden floor broke loose from some of the cables that supported it, came careening down, and smashed to pieces. The cables had not been securely fastened to the floor, and the weak­ ened joints had parted. As they broke, half the floor, unsupported, had crashed to the ground. If the accident had happened a few hours earlier, Barnard and Ellerman would probably have been killed; had it had hap­ pened a few nights earlier. Harper and half the University of Chicago high command might have died. As it was, the telescope was almost useless for months while the floor was rebuilt, this time with the cables securely fas­ tened. Fortunately no damage had occurred to the telescope or lens.'^ As the work progressed on the floor. Hale began planning the dedication ceremonies. Since Yerkes w as to be away all summer for his usual vacation in Europe, the exercises were scheduled for the fall of 1897, soon after his return.'' Finally, the third week in October arrived. America was at peace and all was right with the world. In Chicago, Carson Pirie Scott and Company was selling a complete boy's "outfit" Charles T. Yerkes, donor of Yerkes Observatory and Theodore of clothes, including a coat, two pairs of shorts, Dreiser's model for The Titan and The Financier. a cap, and suspenders for $4.10, Mandel Brothers was advertising a young man's three- However, just a few nights later, disaster piece suit for $10, Ihe Fair had men's or struck. The financier Yerkes, fearful that ladies' bicycles for $13.95, and the National some of his enemies or competitors would sab­ Dental Parlors were advertising sets of false otage the telescope, had given strict orders teeth for $4. On Sunday, October 17, the pop­ that no one except the astronomers should ular Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones preached ever be allowed anywhere near the telescope. to his fashionable congregation at All Souls He feared that "many persons—some of them Unitarian Church on the Yerkes dedication. high in the social scale . . . would even be The title of his sermon was "Astronomy—Its pleased to see an accident happen to the tele­ Struggles and Triumphs," and he was quoted scope." It must be guarded "against either ac­ as saying that astronomical research "should cident or malicious acts of anyone who might inspire us with a new zeal for the quest, for feel disposed to injure it," he demanded, and such study releases us from the trammels of every precaution should be taken to keep visi­ matter and carries us into the fellowship of the tors away from it.'-^ His orders were fruitless, spirit. . . . The shackles of superstition fall off however, although it was a design failure ^'^Williams Bay Observer, June 3, 1897; Hale to C. A. Yerkes, May 31, 1897, Hale to Harper. Mav 20, 1897; Young, June 1, 1897. Hale toJ. F. Keeler, June 1, 1897. Hale to H. A. Rust, May 25. 1897. all in YOA. Yerkes to Hale, June 2, 1897, all in YOA. '•^Yerkes to Harper, May 24, 1897, in University Presi­ '"'Harper to Hale, April 9, 1897; Hale to Keeler, April dents'Papeis, 1889-1925. Special (x>llections, Regenstein 10, 1897; Hale to W. W. Campbell, August 9, 1897, all in Library, University of Chicago (hereafter cited as UPP). YOA. Ill Courtesy Vcrkes Obscivatory Yerkes Observatory in April, 1897, she months before the dedication.

and the soul, unfettered, revels in the bound­ the scientific conferences began the next less universe of truth, beauty and love."'^ day.'^ Yerkes hired a chef and several waiters from one of his favorite restaurants in Chi­ cago to come out to Williams Bay and cater the HE conferences connected with meals for the visiting scientists. The caterers T the dedication began at the Ob­ brought a huge iron stove with them, and sev­ servatory on Monday. The imposing buff- eral wagonloads of provisions, from which a colored brick building stood on a broad, level local reporter inferred "that astronomers are height overlooking Lake Geneva. A recent good eaters, and indeed they look it." The construction site, the ground was nearly bare, stove was set up in the meridian-circle room at except for a few small, recently planted trees. the observatory, and the meals were served in One of the three domes still had not been put one of the halls. ^^ on the building, leaving an unfinished look. No more than thirty astronomers were The 40-inch telescope and Hale's 12-inch present for the first day, but the only sched­ were in complete working order in the other uled events were the annual meeting of the two domes. In the surrounding woods the ma­ board of editors of the A.strophysica/ Journal, ples were in brilliant autumn color, but the and informal scientific discussions. Several skies were gray and overcast. As the visiting as­ demonstrations were also set up in the labora­ tronomers arrived at Williams Bay, Hale met tories and shops of the observatory building. each train at the station with rented horse- Frank Wadsworth showed the visitors a new drawn hacks and buses and accompanied interferometer (for measuring precision them directly to the observatory. There were wavelengths), and George W. Ritchey demon­ no hotels in the little town, and although the strated his methods of grinding the 60-inch most important guests were put in the faculty mirror that ten years later became the basis of members' houses, the rest had to stay in the first large reflecting telescope at Mount nearby farmhouses or at the observatory itself. Wilson. Carl Lundin, of the Clark firm that Many of them slept on cots that were set up at had made the 40-inch lens for the Yerkes tele­ night in the library, then taken down before scope, demonstrated the method that had ^''Chicago Tribune. October 18-22. 1897. The lyibune covered the dedication in depth and is the source for most ''Hale to J. M. Van Vleck. October 13, 1897; Hale to of the descriptive material. See also Chicago Daily News and E. C. Pickering. October 13. 1897; Hale to F. W. Shepard- Chicago Daily Inter Ocean for the same week. University of son. October 13, 1897. all in YOA. Chicago Weekly. Vol. 6, No. 4, 1897, and Lake Geneva Her­ ^^Williams Bay Ob.sen'er, October 22, 1897. gives these ald, October 22, 1897. and many other details of this week's events.

112 OSTERBROCK: MINUS FIRST MEETING

been used for testing its surface, and Henry than the only other telescope with which it Crew, of nearby Northwestern University, ex­ could be compared, the Lick Observatory 36- hibited the operation of a new electric arc for inch. The Tribune reporter had evidently been spectroscopic research.'^ fed some background material by Hale or Nearly fifty more visitors arrived that eve­ Burnham, for he added that the location of ning, and they had a chance to look through Yerkes Observatorv was better than the Lick the 40-inch, for the skies had temporarily site on Mount Hamilton. This odd conclusion, cleared. Barnard and Burnham showed them attributed to "the opinion of practical men close double stars, well resolved by the giant connected with both locations," is decidedly telescope. For the next two days there was a questionable, for there are many more clear busy round of conferences, with the astrono­ nights at Lick than in southern Wisconsin. It mers presenting papers describing their re­ was cloudy that night, so the visitors had to be cent research results. James E. Keeler, of content wTth a tour of the instrument and opti­ Allegheny Observatory, gave the most impor­ cal shops instead of the planned observing ses­ tant paper on Tuesday morning. He de­ sion with Barnard, who had hoped to show scribed his photographic studies of the spectra several stars, nebulae, and clusters with the 40- of the "third-type" (cool) stars, showed en­ inch. larged slides of his spectrograms of many of Wednesday was a full day of scientific pa­ these stars (arranged in order of spectral fea­ pers, the most interesting being Barnard's on tures), and explained how the various lines his work of photographing nebulae, and Pick­ and bands changed along the sequence. He ering's on the Harvard Observatory research and the other astrophysicists were searching program. Yerkes himself arrived on the train for the meaning of these empirically discussed that evening, and Hale met him at the station orderings, but too little was known of atomic and took him directly to the observatory to physics, and success came only years later. An­ meet the visitors. Then, after supper with other important paper that day was by Simon Hale, Yerkes came back to observe stars with Newcomb, who described his new method of "his telescope," but it was cloudy again. Never­ finding the average distance of a group of theless, the big, florid magnate was pleased, stars, by comparing their apparent ("proper") and told the reporters, gesturing to Hale, that and linear ("radial") motions. Still other pa­ "the management could not be improved pers were given by George C. Comstock of the upon." He also predicted that before long a University of Wisconsin, on the visual observa­ few comets and new stars would be discovered tional work he was doing at its Washburn Ob­ through "that tunnel," indicating the 40-inch servatory, and by Carl Runge, who had come refractor. He and Hale went into the library from Hannover, Germany, to speak on his and listened for a few minutes to part of identification of oxygen in the solar spec­ Barnard's talk, illustrated with slides of his trum.^"' photographs, which was the substitute for the That afternoon Hale led off with an ad­ observing session that evening. Then Yerkes dress of welcome, coupled with a description left for the night, no doubt spent as the guest of the observatory, its instruments, and espe­ of one of the trustees at a lakeshore mansion. cially the 40-inch refractor. He described its Thursday was the high point of the week's light-gathering power and resolution in scien­ exercises. Two special trains left Chicago early tific terms to the visiting astronomers, but the that morning, bringing about 700 trustees, Chicago Tribune translated his talk into terms faculty members, and guests to Williams Bay. its readers could understand by saying that the The crowd was so large that several lake Yerkes telescope was one-fifth more powerful steamers were engaged to take most of them from Williams Bay station, close to the shore, to the observatory pier. Only those too old or '"(ieorge E. Hale, "The Dedication of the Yerkes Ob- servatorv." in the Astrophysical journal. 6: 353 (1897). re­ infirm to climb the steep hill from the landing lates most of the happenings of the week. to the observatory were conveyed directly to -"W. W. Pavne. "Dedication of Yerkes Observatorv." the door by horse-drawn buses. Entering the in Popular Astronomy, 5: 340 (1897). is an eyewitness ac­ building, the spectators went into the 40-inch count of the meeting, in which most of the papers are dome, where the floor was in its lowest posi­ briefly summarized. Abstracts of all of them arc gi\en by Hussey, in footnote 1. tion, supported on concrete blocks. Even so, as 113 Scientists at the Yerkes Observatory dedication, October, 1897. The group in front, at right of center, includes James E. Keeler (in derby), Edward C. Pickering (in soft gray hat with band), and Carl Runge (a little in front). E. E. Barnard is at far left, Henry Crew at far right, and George Ellery Hale (in soft, wide-brimmed hat) at right end of second row from rear. The women are (from the left) Caroline E. Furness, Vassar College; Lizzie S. Pickering; Evelina C. Hale; Susan J. Cunningham, Swarthmore College; and Mary W. Whitney. Va.ssar. they seated themselves on the folding chairs on a temporary rostrum that had been erected that covered the newly rebuilt floor, some of atone end of the floor.-' them must have wondered just how strong it really was. The day was cold and gloomy, and the guests were advised to keep their hats and HE ceremonies opened with a coats on in the unheated dome. T prayer by Hulbert, and then Soon after noon, the academic procession the Spiering String Quartet, a Chicago group entered, everyone wearing caps and gowns, in which had volunteered its services, played an the kind of pageantry that President Harper Andante by Tchaikovsky. The acoustics in the loved. First came the faculty members from cavernous dome left a good deal to be desired, Chicago, who made up the University Council but at least the audience could hear well and the University Senate. Following them, in enough to know when the selection was over pairs, were Hale and Simon Newcomb, who and applaud tumultuously. Then Keeler was to be the speaker at the convocation in mounted the podium and delivered his ad­ Chicago, the following day, then Eri B. dress, "The Importance of Astrophysical Re­ Hulbert, dean of the Divinity School at Chi­ search, and the Relation of Astrophysics to cago and the Reverend James D. Butler of Other Physical Sciences." He defined astro­ Madison, Wisconsin, the two chaplains for the physics as a subject closely allied to astronomy, occasion, then Ryerson, the president of the chemistry, and physics, drawing material that board of trustees, and Keeler, the main could be profitably used from any science and speaker for the day. Bringing up the rear were '^^University Record (Chicago), 2: 235 (1897), gives the Harper and Yerkes. They all marched to seats complete program of the dedication.

114 OSTERBROCK: MINUS FIRST MEETING concerned with the nature of the heavenly bodies—what they are, rather than where they are, which had been the task of the old astron­ omy. Mostly it depended upon the analysis of light. Although astrophysics had little practi­ cal, money-making value, its subject, like that of astronomy, was nothing less than under­ standing the universe. Thus it was of the deep­ est interest to scientists and to the general pop­ ulation alike. Astrophysical research was difficult and demanding, requiring the high­ est mental discipline, training, and insight. It also required complicated apparatus. Some traditionalists might look back with nostalgia to the good old days when the human eye was the only instrument an astronomer needed at the telescope, but those days were gone for­ ever. Keeler went on to describe the importance of photography and of spectroscopy in astro­ physics, and to sketch out some of the prob­ lems they might be expected to solve—the motions of the stars, the abundances of the elements, the physical conditions in the stars, the detailed structure of the Sun, the surface of the Moon, the atmospheres and surfaces of the planets, the intrinsic differences between stars, their evolutionary histories, the proper­ Simon Newcomb, outstanding American theoretical astronomer and the main invited speaker at the session held on the ties of binary stars and their orbits, among University of Chicago campus. other problems. It was a modern, forward- looking speech. The topics Keeler described Yerkes was introduced, and drew the most ap­ were, in fact, the main problems of astrophys­ plause of all. According to the Tribune, "the ics for the next fifty years, and more than one streetcar magnate blushed like a bashful of them is still under active investigation to­ maiden." To an appreciative audience like day. He closed with graceful tributes to the this, Yerkes could be surprisingly modest. His munificence of Yerkes and to the skill of the short speech paid tribute to Harper, the uni­ builders of the observatory. Its staff, he said, versity, and the builders of the telescope. He were masters of both astronomical and astro- gave a capsule history of 5,000 years of astron­ physical research, and their work would throw omy, no doubt w ritten for him by Hale, begin­ light on the dark places in nature and thus ning with the Greeks and culminating in the advance true scientific progress.-- He sat spectroscope. Yerkes professed himself fully down to more tumultuous applause, but as he satisfied with the telescope, observatory, and had spoken for slightly over an hour, many of staff, and with a flourish turned the structure the non-astronomical guests were probably over to the University of Chicago. Ryerson ex­ clapping more to warm up than to express pressed the gratitude of the board of trustees, their appreciation of the fine points of his pa­ and Harper then delivered an address de­ per. scribing the building of the observatory and Next, the string group played the Largo closed by thanking Yerkes f ulsomely on behalf from the Quartet in F Major by Dvorak, al­ of the faculty and students.--^ ways a favorite composer in Chicago. Then The benediction was given by James D. Butler, an 83-year-old retired minister who ^^James E. Keeler, "The Importance of Astrophysical '^'^University Record (Chicago), 2: 246 (1897), gives the Research, and the Relation of Astrophysics to Other Phys­ complete texts of the speeches by Y'erkes, Ryers(m. and ical Sciences," in the Astrophysical J ournal, 6:271 (1897). Harper. 115 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

that "the dedication of the Yerkes telescope is another step toward that proud position of preeminence in science and culture to which Chicago is rapidly and surely advancing." It always considered southern Wisconsin a part of Chicagoland!-' Friday was given over to the dedication at the University of Chicago campus. In the morning physicist Albert A. Michelson dem­ onstrated some of his experimental work in light to the visiting scientists at Ryerson Labo­ ratory. After a lunch hosted by Harper, they heard an address by Newcomb, the "rather grim dean of American astronomers.'-'' Sixty- three years old, he had been in charge of the Nautical Almanac Office from 1877 until his refirement a few months before the dedica­ tion, and he represented the apotheosis of the old-time astronomy. Newcomb was a master of gravitadonal theory, and had made many contributions to predicting mathematically the detailed motions of the planets and satel­ lites in their orbits. His article on "Abstract Science in America," published in the Norlh American Review in 1876, was one of the first appeals for support for pure science, as op­ posed to applied science, in this country, and according to one admiring biographer he had Courtesy Lkk Observatory done more than any other person since Ben­ James E. Keeler, pioneer American astrophysicist and the main jamin Franklin to make American science re­ invited speaker at the minus first meeting of the A merican spected and honored abroad. Over the years Astronomical Observatory. he had given many lectures at commence­ was the longtime curator of the State Histori­ ments, dedications, and scientific con­ cal Society of Wisconsin. He was substituting gresses.^^ for President Charles Kendall Adams of the When Newcomb rose and launched into his University of Wisconsin, who was ill. The address at the Kent Lecture Theatre in the small, wiry Butler, a well-known Madison chemistry building, the audience saw a very character who signed his letters, "Superocto- distinguished, determined, patriarchal figure. genarianically yours," in closing his prayer He walked to the rostrum with a slight limp, spoke directly to Hale, saying, "You are hap­ but spoke slowly and forcefully. His address, pier than Plato. When Plato was asked 'Where "Aspects of American Astronomy," was a will your ideal heaven be realized?' he looked graceful, somewhat florid, but backward- upw^ard and answered, 'in Heaven.' But your looking speech. He paid many pleasant com­ ideal you hold becoming actual here and now pliments to Chicago, and even cracked a joke in the midst of vour best years."'^' at the expense of the reporters, who had After this, all the rest was anticlimatic. A gigantic luncheon was served to the guests in '^•'Chicago Tribune, October 22. 1897. the halls of the observatory. Then they walked ^''Walter S. Adams. "Some Reminiscences of the through the building and inspected the tele­ Yerkes Observatorv. 1898-1904," in Science, 106: 196 (1947). scopes, instruments, and shops until the trains ^'S. Newcomb. "Abstract Science in America." in the left for Chicago at 4 P.M. Fhe whole day had North American Review, 122: >^^ (1876); William Alvord. been a great success. I he Tribune editorialized "Address of the Retiring President of the Societv, in Awarding the Bruce Medal to Professor Simon New- ••^J. D. Butler to Hale. October 17. 1897, in YOA; But­ cf)mb." in Publications of the Astronomical Society of fhe Pa­ ler to Harper. November 4, 1897, in L'PP. cific, 10:49(1898).

116 OSTERBROCK: MINUS FIRST MEETING

James D. Butler, long-time curator of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and one of the chaplains at the Yerkes Observatory dedication, working in his library. "made known everything that occurred, and, closed with the words—"Fhe public spirit of in an emergency, requiring a heroic measure, which this city is the focus has made the desert what did not occur." The conferences on bloom as the rose, and benefited humanity by every aspect of astronomy had been inspiring, the diffusion of the material products of the and the younger generation of astronomers earth. Should you ask me how it is in the fu­ would "reap the reward with which nature al­ ture to use its inffuence for the benefit of hu­ ways bestows upon those who seek her ac­ manity at large, I would say, look at the work quaintance from unselfish motives." now going on in these precincts, and study its Newcomb then gave his version of the history spirit."^*^ At the time, delivered in Newcomb's of astronomy in the United States, beginning ringing orator's voice, his address probably "in the middle of the last century" (just before made much more of an impression than Keel- the American Revolution). He tied it adroitly er's had the day before, but today it seems to the history of "the great metropolis of the shallow and unprophetic. West," Chicago, "just pride of its people and That evening Yerkes hosted a banquet for the wonder of the world." Nearly all the astro­ the visiting scientists and the university offi­ nomical history he related had lo do with ce­ cials at Kinsley's, a fashionable C-hicago restau­ lestial mechanics and astronomy of position; rant. Over 200 guests were present. Fhey he referred to astrophysics only briefly. New­ whetted their appetites with blue point oys­ comb paid graceful compliments to Burnham, ters, consomme, and hors d'oeuvres, then Barnard, and Hale, without giving their dined on black bass, beef tenderloin, and names, by describing them by their astronomi­ breast of partridge, washed down with sherry, cal discoveries and emphasizing their fame in sauterne, champagne, and cognac. Eight the scientific world. He ended with some ex­ rounds of toasts were proposed, and at the tremely vague speculations about the future of astronomy—"it is important to us to keep in '^'^S. Newcomb. "Aspects ot American Astronomy." in touch with the traditions of our race'—and ihe Astrophysical Journal. 6: 289 (1897).

117 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

end Yerkes gave a speech expressing his grati­ sembled scientists decided to organize a per­ tude to all concerned. He said that the visiting manent society. A committee which included astronomers should regard Yerkes Observa­ Hale, Newcomb, Pickering, and Comstock was tory as a sister scientific center. He hoped that selected to draft a constitution, and sixty-one all rivalry would cease and that the 40-inch charter members signed the roll."*' The new could be put to the use of all. On this high note society held its first meeting the following the banquet and the dedication ceremonies year, back at Yerkes Observatory, on Septem­ ended. A few details remained to be settled, as ber 6, 1899. Newcomb was elected president, when Hale had to insist to the university Hale, one of the vice-presidents, and Com­ comptroller that the bill submitted by Harley stock, secretary.-^^ Williams of Williams Bay for his services at the The organization of the American Astro­ dedication as a teamster should be paid. "Mr. nomical Society was one of the steps in the Williams," Hale wrote, "is a real estate agent increasing professionafization of science. The and notary public, it is true, but he adds to society has met at least once a year (except these public functions that of teamster, coal 1907) ever since. Though the meetings have purveyor, etc., etc. The teaming was done by grown tenfold in size, with many parallel ses­ him."^^ sions in large halls for the presentation of pa­ pers, each repeats in essence the program of HE dedication with its scientific the minus first meeting. There are always re­ T conferences was considered a search papers, invited lectures, working dem­ great success by all the astronomers and physi­ onstrations, visits to telescopes, tributes to cists who participated.^'* It combined a maxi­ local benefactors, a banquet, and often even mum efficiency of exchange of new research difficulty in getting the bills paid after the ideas and results with good fellowship and the meeting, just as Hale experienced at Williams chance to see old friends again. This meeting Bay, Wisconsin, in 1897. led naturally to a similar meefing at Harvard the following year, at which the ninety-five as- "G. E. H[ale], "The Harvard (conference," in the A^- -"Hale to Rust. October 26, 1897. in YOA. trophysical J ournal, 8: 193 (1898). "'C. H. Rockwell to Hale, October 26, 1897; Keeler to ^^G. F. Hfale], "The Third Conference of Astrono­ Hale, November 1, 1897; Pickering to Hale, Novembers, mers and Astrophysicists," in the Astrophysical J ournal, 10: 1897. all in YOA. 211 (1899).

The William Hesseltine Award The nineteenth annual William Best Hesseltine Award for the best ar­ ticle to be published in the Wisconsin Magazine of History during 1983- 1984 has been given to Patrick J. Maney for his article, "Morris Rubin, The Progressive, and Cold War Liberalism," which appeared in the Spring, 1984, issue of the Magazine. Maney is an associate professor of history at Tulane University. Established in memory of the past president of the State Historical So­ ciety of Wisconsin and distinguished University of Wisconsin professor, the William Best Hesseltine Award consists of $ 100. There is no deadline for submission, and manuscripts may relate to the history of Wisconsin and the Middle West or to themes of larger national interest. A retrospective on Professor Hesseltine appeared in the Winter, 1982-1983, issue O{I\\Q Magazine.

118 When John Barleycorn Went Into Hiding in Wisconsin

By Paul W. Glad

|N January 16, 1919, the Eight­ hiding in Wisconsin and throughout the na­ O eenth Amendment became a tion. part of the Constitution of the United States. Just before the arrival of the Great Depres­ According to its terms, the manufacture, sale, sion a decade later, a University of Wisconsin and transportation of intoxicating liquors student from Viroqua wrote a term paper on were to be prohibited exactly one year later, his home town. One lively section of that pa­ and the nation prepared for a long drought. per bore the heading "The Prohibition Ques­ When the day of national desiccation finally tion," and the student introduced his arrived, evangelist Billy Sunday held a funeral discussion with these observations: service for John Barleycorn in Norfolk, Vir­ This is rather a misleading title as ginia. Ten thousand people attended the ol)- there is no Prohibition question in Viro­ sequies, which began with the arrival of a qua. There can't be. There is no Prohibi­ special train from Milwaukee presumably tion. Either the people have not heard of bearing the corpse in a twenty-foot coffin. the great mistake of 1918 or they are de­ With his Satanic Majesty trailing behind in liberately disobeying it. I rather think it is deep anguish, the cortege proceeded from the the latter. Despite the efforts of the railroad station to the tabernacle where Sun­ W.C.T.U., the city ofhcials, and numer­ day greeted the procession with undisguised ous long nosed people with plenty of glee. "Good-bye, John," crowed the evangel­ time on their hands, there has been, is, ist. "You were Ciod's worst enemy; you were and always will be, plenty of stimulating fluids in Viroqua. Wine is a mocker, hell's best friend. I hate you with a perfect strong drink is raging, and beer—beer is hatred. I love to hate you."' two bits a quart. But something was amiss. The coffin that There are no speak-easies in Viroqua. Billy Sunday addressed with such exuberance If you should happen by a dispensary was empty. John Barleycorn was not dead. In­ and hear the wassail, lusty songs and deed, he had never left Milwaukee. He had feminine laughter that is always in evi­ gone underground, to be sure, but he had not dence, speakeasy is the last term you been interred for all eternity. He remained would think of. alive and well; he had simply retreated into Following the introduction came a list of fifty-one persons and establishments engaged in selling liquor to the citizenry. Some of them EDITOR'S NOTE: This paper was originally delivered at the Founders Day meeting on February 24, 1984, in Madison. were notable enough to merit brief characteri­ zations or descriptions. "Put a couple of cloves ^New York rracs, January 17, 1920; Charles Merz, The Dry Decade (Garden City, New York, 1930), 1; John in [Clarence's] nose and it would be mistaken Koh\er, Ardent Spirits CSew York, 1973), 12-13. for a ham." Harold had eyes "like a couple of Copyrigfit © 1985 by Tfie State Historical Society of Wiscomin 119 All rigllts of reproduction in any form reserved UHi(X3) mH2() The Moonlight Outing Club, Muskego Lake, July 4, 1913. fried eggs." Shorty was "loquacious when have a symbiotic relationship with other drunk and always loquacious." Skinny was American reform movements in the nine­ Viroqua's "standing argument for prohibi­ teenth century. tion. . . . He has one great ambition—to get as drunk as he can as quick as he can and stay that way as long as he can. He is an absolute martyr to this ambition.'"- HE initial settlement of the New World occurred at a time How seriouslv are we to take this assess­ T when the consumption of distilled spirits, es­ ment of the Eighteenth Amendment's ineffec­ pecially gin, was cm the rise in Europe. Al­ tiveness, an assessment that the Viroqua though gin never became popular in colonial student shared with many of his classmates? America, the colonists proved adept in the The prohibition effort is a challenge to the production of fermented beverages and dis­ analytical abilities of historians. It involved tilled spirits from the grains and fruits at complex relationships among ethnic groups, hand. Drinking became a central featme of economic interests, religious beliefs, and polit­ colonial life, as beer and cider provided stand­ ical objectives. To understand the Dry Decade ard beverages at the dinner table, and as colo­ we must concern ourselves with the attitudes nists celebrated weddings, baptisms, minis­ of Americans before prohibition, the influ­ terial ordinations, militia musters, and fu­ ences that led to ratificadon of the Eighteenth nerals with generous libations.'' By the time of Amendment, the problems involved in en­ the American Revolution, the per capita con­ forcement of the Constitution, and tlie move­ sumption of absolute alcohol for everyone ment that brought about repeal. We must also over fifteen years of age was about six gallons a attempt an assessment of what the dr)'s be­ year—more than double the amount Ameri­ lieved was a noble experiment and what critics cans consume today. Yet drinking seldom led called the lie of the land. To begin, however, to morbidity in the colonial period. Officials we must understand how prohibition came to had the statutory power to deal with alcohol-

^(^yrus M. Butt III. "X'iroqua," paper in Student Re­ 'MarkEdwaid Lender and James Kirbv 'ShirUn.Drink­ cords, Experimental C;ollege, Class 4 (1930-1932), Co\- ing in America (New York, 1982), 0-14; VV. J. Rorabaugh, lege of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York, Archives, Madison. 1979), 25-38. 120 VMhi\,(i33ir)l A dance hall in Milwaukee, before Frohibition. related problems, and colonists credited alco­ fermented beverages for distilled spirits be­ hol with producing personal and social fore the end of the eighteenth century. De­ benefits in health and happiness. The Found­ spite a growing opposition to hard liquor, ing Fathers of the Republic were bibbers. however, the available data suggest that in the George Washington drank a home brew with a early years of the Republic drinkers were im­ molasses base, and Benjamin Franklin pro­ bibing more than ever. By 1830, per capita duced a spruce beer. James Madison, for consumption for the population over fifteen whom the capital city of Wisconsin was named, years of age was in excess of seven gallons of commonly consumed a pint of whiskey a day, raw alcohol a year, more than at any other most of it before breakfast. During the War of time in American history.'^ Like other coun­ Independence, the Continental Army sought tries where consumption rates were high, to provide a daily liquor ration of four ounces most notably Scotland and Sweden, the for the prevention of disease.* United States was agricultural, sparsely popu­ Although drunkenness helps to account for lated, and geographically isolated from for­ some military inefficiencies during the Revo­ eign markets. Abundant grain went to the lution, that was not the reason for the first distilleries, and ease of distribution made efforts to reduce the consumption of alcohol whiskey an article of trade as well as a standard that coincided with the winning of indepen­ American drink.^ dence. More importantly, the Revolutionary As rates of consumption approached re­ era, with its erosion of deferential patterns, cord heights, other influences were also at aroused concern for social stability. Benjamin work. Expansion of the frontier, the coming Rush, a Philadelphia physician and a signer of of new immigrants, and the first indications of the Declaration of Independence, was the most prominent and important of those per­ sons troubled by the disruptive consequences "•Norman El, (^lark. Deliver Us from Evil (New York, 1976), 18-21; Lender and M'dnm, Drinking in America, 6, of heavy tippling. In 1784 he produced An •'Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic, 39^6; Lender and Inquiry into the Effecls of Spinlous Liqums, an es­ Martin, Drinking in America, 36—40. say which became a model for later temper­ ''Clark, Deliver Us from Evil, 20. Clark sets the per capita ance publications.' consumption at about ten gallons. Lender and .Martin provide a table on consumption estimates over time. See In large part as a result of Rush's efforts, Drinking in America, 196—197. the citizens of several states began substituting 'Rorabaugh, Tlie Alcoholic Republic. 10—1 I. 121 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 an approaching industrial transformation all ham Lincoln remarked on the day of his seemed to threaten community cohesion and assassination that "after reconstruction the stability. The times demanded reform if re­ next great question will be the overthrow and publican values were to remain credible, and suppression of the legalized liquor traffic." the temperance movement gained strength Whether or not the martyred president had in along with the movements for women's rights, fact voiced such sentiments, leaders of the the abolition of slavery, and a host of other Prohibition party, founded in 1868, looked to reforms.** By reinforcing the efforts of organi­ antebellum abolitionism for a model they zations formed to reduce the consumption of could adapt to the new needs of American so­ spirits, the reform impulse did much to mod­ ciety after Appomattox. Thus the party plat­ erate American drinking habits. The Ameri­ form demonstrated concern for a means of can Temperance Society, established in 182(5 incorporating and dominating a broad range through the efforts of reformers and clergy­ of reforms. During the economically troubled men such as Lyman Beecher, led the attempt 1890's the party made advances towards fu­ to bring about sobriety through moral sua­ sion with other organizations such as the Pop­ sion.^ Buttoardent opponents of drink, moral ulist party, organizations pledged to improve suasion alone was insufficient. For them, the lot of a downtrodden humanity. In the po­ nothing but statutory prohibition of alcohol litical struggles of that decade, however, the would suffice. broad-gauge Prohibitionists lost out to a fac­ A leader in the movement to secure legisla­ tion of the party that emphasized the single is­ tion prohibiting the sale of beverage alcohol sue symbolized by the dispensary of spirits: was Neal Dow, a prominent businessman in the saloon. The party's effectiveness declined, the state of Maine and mayor of Portland. and by the time prosperity returned at the Throughout the 1840's Dow stumped the close of the century, control over the prohibi­ state for his cause, and in 1851 his efforts pro­ tion movement was passing to the Anti-Saloon duced the first real prohibition law in Ameri­ League.'^ can history.'" Passage of the Maine law Saloons were indeed a problem at the turn encouraged temperance workers in other of the century. By 1909 there was one saloon states, including Wisconsin, to strive for simi­ for every 300 Americans. The nation had lar legislation. Although the W'isconsin legisla­ more saloons than it had schools, libraries, ture passed two prohiliition bills in 1855, theaters, parks, or churches. Saloonkeepers Governor William A. Barstow vetoed both. encouraged prostitutes, gamblers, and petty Since Barstow was a Democrat, the Republi­ criminals. To increase business, they provided cans might have been expected to continue the free drinks to new customers, most of them fight for a Maine law in Wisconsin. Ihey did adolescents. Saloons posed a threat to indus­ not do so, however, for Republicans were be­ trial productivity, for they reduced the effi­ ginning to turn their undivided attention to ciency of workers. They also posed a threat to the slavery question. Then the Civil War inter­ women. They were a means of sexual exploita­ vened, and for a time prohibition virtually dis­ tion, and they fostered attitudes that sanc­ appeared as a political issue.'' tioned sexual exploitation.'' As women became attracted to the cause of women's rights after the Civil War, it was logi­ ET the cause did not die. Accord­ cal that they should oppose the saloon. I he Y ing to prohibitionist lore, Abra- Woman's Christian lemperance Union began in Ohio in 1874, but it was to Frances Willard, •^Lender and Martin. Drinking in America. 34—40, .52— who had grown up on a farm near Janesville, 54. "Clark, Deliver Us from Evil, 32-35; Kobler, A rdeiit Spir­ '^Clark, Deliver Us from Evil, 50; Jack S, Blocker, Jr., its, 52—58; Joseph R, C,ws{'\e\c\.Ssmbolic Cncade: Status Poli­ Retreat from Reform: The Proltibilion Movement in the United tics and the American Temperance Movement (L'rbana, 1963), States, 1890-1913 (Westport. Cxjnnccticut, 1976), 77-78, 42^3, 103— 106; Andrew Sinclair, Era of Excess: A Social lliston of '"Clark, Deliver Us from Evil, 3,5-40, 43-50; (nisheld, tite Prohibition Movement (New York and Evanslon, 1962), Symbolic Crusade, 42-43. 84-85. "Richard N. CXirrent, Tlie Hislon- of Wisconsin. Volume '•^Lender and Martin, Drinking in America. 102—108; II: The CivU War Era, 1848-1873 (Madison, 1976), 215- Clark, Deliver Us from Evil, 53-57; Kobler, Ardent Spirits, 217,22,5-226. 174-176,

122 WHi (X.-!) 28:199 Albert Liss's saloon in the "Devil's Elbow" section of Stevens Point.

that the WCTU owed its success. Serving as branch of the Anti-Saloon League formed in president of the organization until her death 1898, and it vigorously sought support from in 1898, Willard campaigned assiduously the respectable middle class. As state superin­ against the saloon. After the presidential cam­ tendent for Wisconsin, the Reverend Thomas paign of 1880, she helped organize the Home M. Hare provided a hint of what the League Protection party to promote what she called stood for when he commented on the organi­ the "politics of the mother heart." Within a zation's national convendon in 1905. The del­ few years she was optimistically offering some egates, he observed, were not "long-haired, kind words, as she put it, "for the movement wild-eyed, squeaky voiced cranks," but per­ that is revolutionizing the oudook of our sons of stature and substance. Skeptical of re­ brothers and sisters who are wage-workers form on several fronts, he took comfort from and through which temperance and the eleva­ "the absence of the extreme and visionary ele­ tion of women are making such progress as ment usually so prominent in reform gather­ seems well-nigh magical."" ings.""^ Such attitudes suggest that when Willard's WCTU had greater staying prohibitionists focused most'of their attention power than did the Prohibition party, and af­ on eliminating the saloon, they were in effect ter the failure of political fusion in the nine­ avoiding serious challenge to the social and ties, it continued its battles in cooperation with economic standards of iriiddle-class Ameri­ the Anti-Saloon League. Both organizations cans. sought to ally themselves with the prosperous Although the Anti-Saloon League boasted and influential members of communities they of astonishing success in mobilizing dry voters hoped to win for their cause.'" A Wisconsin across the country during the flr.st decade of the twentieth century, it met stubborn resist­ "Mary Earhart, Frances Willard, from Prayers to Politics (Chicago, 1944), 24-39, 19,5-196, 21.5-220, 230-244; ance in Wisconsin. Fhe brewing industry, cen­ Ruth Bordin, Women and 7>mft<'ra«ff (Philadelphia 1981) tered in Milwaukee, had grown since its 117-139, ''Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 "^Blocker, Retreat from Reform, 208; Jeffrey Lucker, (New York, 1967), 89-90; Blocker, Retreat from Reform, "The Politics of Prohibition in Wisconsin, 1917-1933" 207. •' (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1968), 2-3,

123 WHi(W6)2l483 Emptying the last bottle after a saloon raid in Polar, Langlade County, fune 1, 1933. origins in the 1840's to become one of the over attitudes towards prohibition in Wiscon­ state's most important industries in value sin. While the Anti-Saloon League secured its added by manufacture. By 1910, Wisconsin most enthusiastic support from Protestant ranked third among the states in the produc­ churches deriving their vitality from an evan­ tion of malt liquors and second in the produc­ gelical emphasis, the differing theological and tion of malt.'' An economic interest of such organizational perspectives of the Catholic size could not be expected passively to accept a and Lutheran churches allowed members of program for bringing about its own destruc­ both to oppose prohibition. To the evangeli­ tion, and the Wisconsin Brewers' Association cals, conversion was a profoundly moving in­ exerted considerable influence against the dividual encounter with the Almightv that Anti-Saloon League. Allied with the brewers involved "getting right with God"; for at least were various ethnic groups, particularly the some of the converted, pledges of abstinence Germans. During the 1850's, it was they who may have come to hold a special place as pass­ had most adamantly opposed a Maine law for ports to eternity. Joining the evangelicals in the state. And in the years before 1914, the support of prohibition were advocates of a So­ Deulsche-Amerikanische Nalional-Bund (Ger­ cial Gospel that emphasized the importance of man-American Alliance) took an almost mys­ improving conditions in this world while pre­ tic delight in all things German, including the paring for the next.''' Bv contrast, neither the Genfiitlichkeil of the beer hall. As George Sylvester Viereck, editor of The Fatherland, '"Biu'eau ol the C^ensus, Tliirleentli (Census of the United later observed, leaders of the Alliance "ap­ Slates Taken in the Y'ear 1910. Supplement for Wisconsin (Washington, 1913), 667. pealed exclusively to Deutschtum, but the '"George Sylvester Viereck, Spreading the Germs of Hale Golden Grail of their idealism was filled to the (New York, 1930), 326; National German-American Alliance brim with lager beer.""* (Hearings Before the Subconmiittee on the judiciary. United States Senate, 65 (;ong., 2 sess., Washington, The dominant religious affiliations among 1919), 224; Lucker, "Politics of Prohibition," 3; Sinclair, German-Americans, the Catholic and Lu­ Eraof Excess, 119-120, theran churches, also exerted an influence '•James EI. Timberlake, Prohibition and Ihe Progressive 124 GLAD: JOHN BARLEYCORN

German Catholics nor the German Lutherans never seemed inconsistent with either decent placed much emphasis upon traumatic con­ living or church teaching. More than their versions, and theological as well as ethnic in­ Irish coreligionists, therefore, the Germans fluences limited the Social Gospel's appeal for tended to be conservative in belief and tradi­ Germans of both persuasions. tional in practice. And the most liberal of Ger­ There were, of course, variations of atti­ man Catholics tended to be far less amenable tude towards prohibition within each confes­ to prohibition than were the liberal Irish.'-^^ sion. In the Catholic church the fight over For different reasons, the Lutherans also alcohol usage was part of a broader battle over divided along lines of national origin in their Americanization, with the Americanizers urg­ attitudes towards prohibidon. Influenced by a ing total abstinence as a way of overcoming nineteenth-century pietistic reform move­ stereotypes that associated drunkenness with ment in Scandinavia, the Scandinavian- certain immigrant groups. During the nine­ Americans had moved much closer to the teenth century the Irish, in particular, had evangelical denominations of the United gained notoriety as hard drinkers. When the States than had the Germans. Swedish Luther­ prohibition movement grew in strength under ans of the Augustana Synod were perhaps the Anti-Saloon League leadership after 1900, most committed—first to temperance reform Irish acculturationists began to favor it as a and then to prohibition.--^ Augustana Luther­ means of overcoming the Irish reputation for ans had long been troubled by spiritual com­ insobriety.-" Identifying themselves with lib­ placency and clerical conservatism in the eral Catholics who worked for adaptation to established church of Sweden; with migration American society, they won some important to the United States they found abundant op­ victories for Irish respectability. They proved portunity for their evangelical enthusiasm. so persuasive, in fact, that even some Germans Joining the Swedes in the campaign against began to consider the merits of their argu­ insobriety were many of the Norwegians and ments. By 1913 the Central-Verein, the prin­ the General Synod, an association of older, cipal organization of German Catholics in the primarily English-speaking Lutherans.-^ United States, had conceded that alcoholism Unlike the evangelical Scandinavians, the was "a very grave danger to the welfare of our German Lutherans were not given to emo­ people" and had recommended that it be op­ tional enthusiasm but were, instead, preoccu­ posed within the Catholic church.-' Most Ger­ pied with working out clear statements of man Catholics, however, found a great doctrine. Beginning with insistence upon both difference between the whiskey-swilling Irish the Old and New Testaments as the written reprobate and tfie honest burgher enjoying Word of God and as the only rule of faith and his "continental Sunday" in the Biergarlen. life, most German Lutherans held to confes­ Though living in a new land, they were reluc­ sional writings of the sixteenth century as the tant to forsake customs that in Germany had pure, unadulterated explanation of the Word of God. They resisted such deviations as pi­ etism, rationalism, and modernism, and they Movement, 79W-/920 (Cambridge, 1963), 18-21,23-29; Sinclair, Era of Excess, 64-68; Peter H, Odegard, Pressure could accept neither prohibition nor the Social Politics: The Story of the Anii-Saloon League (New York, Gospel as having anything to do with the effl- 1928),50-S5;B\ocker, Retreat from Reform, 16.5-166; Mar­ tin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Proleslant Experience in America (New York, 1970), 212-213, '-'-Ibid., 37-39; Robert D, Cross, The Emergence of Liberal '-"Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movemenl. Catholicism in America (C^ambridge, 1958), 71, 89-90, 108, 31-32; Philip Cleason, The Conservative Reformers: 124-129; Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Move­ German-American Catholics and the Social Order (Notre ment, 31—32, 118—119; Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade, 56—57, Dame, Indiana, 1968), 37; Sister Joan Bland, Hibernian -'(ieorge M, Stephenson, The Religious Aspects of Swed­ Crusade: The Stoiy of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of ish Immigration: A Study of Immigrant Churches (Minneapo­ America (Washington, 1951), 267; Dennis J, Cilark, "The lis, 1932), 7-8, 17-22,374; T'lmberldke, Prohibition and the Irish Catholics," in Randall M, Miller and Thomas D. Progressive Movemenl, 5—6, Marzik, eds,. Immigrants and Religion in Urban .America ^••E. Clifford Nelson, ed,. The Lutherans in N orlh America (Philadelphia, 1977), 61; Robert F, Bales, ".Attitudes to­ (Philadelphia, 1975), 326-327, 417-418; Harald ward Drinking in Irish Culture," in David J. Pittman and Rimblomand Hans Norman, ed^.. From Sweden to America: Charles R, Snyder, eds.. Society, Culture, and Drinking Pal- A History of the Migration (Minneapolis, 1976), 116-119; terns (New York, 1962), 157-187. Nicholas C. Burckel, ed., Racine: Growth and Change in a ^'Gleason, The Conser-oative Reformers, 157. Wisconsin County (Racine, 1977), 498,

125 A Pi Kappa Alpha costume party at the University of Wisconsin, 1927. Photo by M. E. Diemer. WHi(D487)B719 cacy of God's love, the only means by which a flames of patriotic fires, and concerted efforts sinful mankind might be saved. Thus the Cier- to portray Kaiser Wilhelm as the diabolical man Lutherans of the Ohio, Buffalo, Mis­ leader of a band of Huns, anxieties over the souri, Iowa, and Wisconsin Synods often stood loyalty of Wisconsin began to mount. 'Fhe alone, isolated from other Lutherans as well as state's combined immigrant and first- from Anti-Saloon League efforts to purify generation German-Austrian population was American society by destroying the liquor about 700,000 out of 2,300,000 residents.'-" A traffic. Opposing the Catholic church with in­ majority of its citizens had German-speaking creasing virulence as the four hundredth an­ ancestors, and in other parts of the country niversary celebration of the Reformation supporters of the war effort took to calling approached in 1917, the German Lutherans Wisconsin the "traitor state." When journalist nevertheless found themselves united with Ray Stannard Baker visited Wisconsin in the German Catholics in their antagonism to­ summerof 1917, he reported to William Allen wards Anti-Saloon League objecti\es.--' White that he found it "really the most back­ ward state I've struck in its sentiment toward

HETHER German-American ^•'Myron A. Marty, Lutherans and Roman Catholicism: w hostility to prohibition was The Changing Conflict, 1917-1963 (Notre Dame, Indiana, primarily ethnic or whether it was religious, 1968), 4-5; Nelson, The Lutherans in North America, 17;-i- the coming of W'orld War I effectively neutral­ 185; Dean Wayne Kohlhoff, "Missotiri Synod Liuherans ized German influence in American society. and the Image of Germanv, 1914-1945" (doctoral disser­ tation, Universitv of (;hicago, 1973), 32-33, 152-154, In the midst of the preparedness campaign, 179. plots and rumors of plots, rallies to fan the '^H'Aifntal Times (Madison), May 6, 1918, f26 The soft-drink but, poi lions of which can be seen at the back of the preceding picture. WHi (D487) 6720 Photo by M. E. Diemer. the war."^^ Sensitive to the indictment of their mous essay published in the Neiv Republic, commonwealth, patriots organized the Wis­ philosopher John Dewey argued that the war consin Loyalty Legion to root out sedition and represented a "plasticjuncture" in history. Co­ to extirpate the Teutonic influences they ercion could become a threat, to be sure, but found on every hand. To assist in that objec­ Dewey thought that the war had brought the tive, the New York Sun in 1918 published what creation of agencies to promote "the pufjlic it identified as a "Sedition Map." Based on in­ and social interest over the private and posses­ formation provided by the Loyaltv Legion, it sive interest." In short, the war experience labeled as disloyal the counties in a triangle could teach "intelligent men" how to construct from Milwaukee and Manitowoc on Lake a better world. Among other things, wartime Michigan to Richland County in the west. Out­ needs "added to the old lessons of public sani­ side that triangle. Green, La Crosse, and Mar­ tary regulation the new lesson of social regula­ athon counties appeared as islands of tion for purposes of moral prophylaxis," and pro-Germanism.^*^ Dewey cited new efforts to control the traffic With anti-German sentiment running high in alcoholic beverages as a part of the same and with wartime needs for men and materiel war-inspired impulse.--' a prime consideration, many Americans be­ came amenable to patriotic coercion. In a fa- ^"Samuel Hopkins Adams, "Invaded .America; Wis­ consin Joins the "VVar," Eveiybody's Magazine, 38; 28 (Janu­ ary, 1918); Walter Goodland to Alfred Bench, Septemlier 12, 1917, in the Wisconsin Loyalty Legion Papers, State ^'Ray Stannard Baker to William .'\llen White, June 8, Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1917, in the William .'\llen White Papers, Division of Man­ '•^'John Dewey, Characters and Events: Popular Essays in uscripts, Library of C^ongress, Baker, Michigan-born, had Social and Political Philosophy (New York. 1929), II: 551- grown up in St. C^roix Falls, Wisconsin. 560. 127 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

War had come, in fact, just as the Anti- many might have food.)'^- Along with these Saloon League was mounting a massive offen­ measures. Congress passed a resolution call­ sive of its own. Responding to dry pressure in ing for a constitutional amendment to pro­ 1913, Congress had passed the Webb-Kenyon hibit the manufacture, sale, transportation, Act, a measure that prohibited interstate com­ and exportation of intoxicating liquors. merce in alcoholic beverages wherever their Transmitted to the states in December, 1917, importation violated state or local laws. Fear­ the proposed amendment brought on the cli­ ful that the cause might languish if prohibi­ mactic debate over prohibition in an atmo­ tionists settled for such limited legislation. sphere of wartime tension and acute hostility League leaders determined to press on towards towards Germany and all things German.•'•' a constitutional amendment.'^" With American entr\- into the war, thev campaigned for clos­ ing the saloons as part of an efficient war ef­ fort. Professor Irving Fisher, a Yale University RUE to form, despite the risk of economist, wrote the University of Wiscon­ T' being misunderstood, most sin's Edward A. Ross that prohibition "would German-Americans in Wisconsin opposed the save enough grain alone to make a loaf of prohibition amendment. Lay and clerical bread for each of eleven million fighting leaders alike urged their followers to be tem­ men." Prohibition would also allow army and perate in all things, but they worried about the navy physicians "to reduce greatly those con­ threat to freedom they detected in the consti­ tagious diseases that are the most prevalent tutional tinkering of the Anti-Saloon League. among both soldiers and sailors."'" During the summer of 1918, Archbishop Se­ bastian G. Messmer of Milwaukee sent out a Having committed the nation to war. Con­ circular letter arguing that "there is a strong gress quickly passed a series of acts to facilitate sectarian power back of the present prohibi­ victory. It tiad already enacted prohibition tion movement." Suspecting that sinister ene­ laws for Alaska and the District of Columbia, mies of the Catholic church were using the as well as a law to eliminate liquor advertise­ reform as a stalking-horse to attack her "in the ments. Now, with the passage of the Selective most sacred mystery entrusted to her," he for­ Service Act, it set up "dry zones" around everv bade "pastors of parishes in this Archdiocese military installation and forbade selling or giv­ from allowing any prohibition speeches to be ing liquor to any member of the armed forces. given on any premises, be it the church, the In an amendment to the Lever Food and Fuel school or a hall."'^' Control Act, it forbade the use of foodstuffs in the manufacture of distilled spirits for bever­ Lutheran congregations of the Missouri age purposes. By presidential proclamation, and Wisconsin synods took a similar position. Woodrow Wilson limited the alcoholic content "We can see no good whatever in a church's of beer to 2,75 percent. (The few should do espousing any outside cause," commented a without drink, argued the drys, so that the writer in the Northwestern Lutheran. "Least of all so messy a cause as prohibition, involved as it is with plots and counterplots, with spying •'"Tirnberlake, Prohibition and Ihe Progressive Movemenl. and detective work, with smug hypocrisy and \59-16'i;Q\ocker,RetreatfromReform,2\4-2\7,227-229; Peter R. Weisensel, "The Wisconsin Tempetance Cru­ •'^Clark, Deliver Usfrom Evil, 118-128; Ernest H, Cher- sade to 1919" (master's thesis. University of Wisconsin, rington. The Evolution of Prohibition in the Untied Stales of 1965), 142; Lucker, "The Politics of Prohibition in Wis­ America: A Chronological History of the Lu/uor Problem and the consin," 3-8; William T, Evjue, A Fighting Editor (Madi­ Temperance Reform in the United Slates from the Earliest Settle­ son, 1968), 263-264, 271-273; The .Anti-Saloon League Year ments to the Consummation of National Prohilntion (Publica­ Book, 1918, p. 322. tion No. 40, Patterson Smiih Reprint Series in •"Fisher to Ross, April 23, 1917, in the Ross Papers, Oiminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Julius Weinberg, Montclair, New Jersey, 1969), 318, 332, 354-355, Edward Alsworlh Ro.ss and Ihe Sociology of Progressivism (Mad­ •'''(;herrington. Evolution of Prohibition, 353; Clark, De­ ison, 1972), 169—170, "Every possible advairtage should liver Us from Evil, 129-130; Lender and Martin, Drinking be taken to make America's assistance in the war immedi­ in America, 129-130; Koblc^v. Ardent Spirds, 206-212; Con­ ate and effective," commented one Wisconsin newspaper, gressional Record, 65 Cong,, 1 sess,, 5548-5560, 5584- "and one of the most apparent changes needed to secure 5590; ibid., 65 Cong,, 2 sess., 337, 422-470, 477-478, 490, efficiency and results is the need of abolishing every sa­ '•'Archbishop Sebastian (;. Messmer to all priests of the loon and brewerv in the nation." Waupaca (bounty Post, Archdiocese, June 17, 1918, Archdiocese Archives, Sl, April 18, 1918. Francis Seminarv, Milwaukee,

128 GLAD: JOHN BARLEYCORN

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Fresh buttermilk was available at Art Gerlh's bar on the corner of Twelfth and Chambers in Milwaukee, about 1925. cant."'^' Later, after the Eighteenth Amend­ perforation of bungholes," an activity that ment had been ratified, the same commenta­ served not God but mammon.''" tor suggested that three interests were behind It goes without saying that Wisconsin's the facade of the Anti-Saloon League's moral brewers and distillers also opposed the reform. The first was the Rockefeller interest, amendment, but their arguments are worth which "absorbs the corn output, and by re­ passing notice. An advertisement of the Wis­ moving the brewer and distiller hopes to buy consin Brewers' Association, for example, all the corn at lowest prices." Second were the suggested that the war crisis had led to an in­ meat packers, who expected cheaper meat crease in the power of the national govern­ and greater profits to result from lower grain ment in Washington, but that sound policy prices, and the canners, who looked forward demanded the return of powers surrendered to new markets in "grape-juice and other by the states. Using the flag as a mantle for products to take the place of the vanished producers of alcoholic beverages, another ad­ cheer." The third interest behind prohibition vertisement pointed out that "the United included "the manufacturers of certain bever­ ages, such as Coca-Cola, which is said to con­ •"'H. K, M,, "The Prohibition .-Xmendment is Win­ ning," in Northwestern Lutheran, 6; 9-10 (^January 26, tain habit-forming drugs.""' From the 1919), At least one prominent drv, William T, Evjue, Lutheran perspective, the proper work of the agreed with H. K, M, Elected to the state assembly in church was preaching the Gospel; identifying 1916, Evjue had sponsored a bill calling for a statewide the Kingdom of God with a saloonless society referendum on prohibition. By 1918, however, he had reduced the church's responsibility to "the become disillusioned with the Anti-Saloon League be­ cause he thought it represented reactionary interests, Ev­ jue, Fighting Editor, 269; Capital Times (Madison), April 11 and 27, 1919; Lucker, "The Politics of Prohibition in Wis­ •'"'H, K, M., "A Few Results of Prohibition,' in Norlh- consin," 15. western Lutheran, 3: 162 (November 7, 1916), •"Kohlhoff, "Missouri Svnod Lutherans," 152-153. 129 VVIli(X:i).'!0508 Another nonalcoholic party at the University of Wisconsin, Alpha Gamma Rho, 1928.

States government is today collecting from the intendent for the state, detailed the liquor industry alone in internal revenue magnitude of his organization's effort. "We more than enough money to pay each year put on a country schoolhouse campaign. . . . [the] interest charge on all three Libertv We put factory experts to speak in the factories Loans."'^^ and got the companies to pay the men for lis­ In wartime Wisconsin, however, the most tening. We built up a Council of One Thou­ telling arguments were those advanced by the sand to back u,s—business and labor leaders.. . Anti-Saloon League and its allies. "We have We sold the factories billboards and posters German enemies across the water," charged which were changed bi-weekly. . . . We staged one prohibitionist in denouncing the brewers. the biggest demonstration in Madison the "W'e have German enemies in this countr\' too. state has ever seen. W'e ratified! and in the And the worst of all our German enemies, the archives at Washington, W'isconsin was one of most treacherous, the most menacing are the thirty-six! We put it over."'" Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller." Patriots at­ Hutton claimed too much. Wisconsin was tacked "Schlitzville-on-the-Lake" for produc­ not one of the thirty-six states necessary for ing "Kaiser brew," and contended that ratification. It was the thirty-ninth state to rat­ German brewers contributed only to indus­ ify, but the point is inconsequential. The trial disorder at a time when efficiency of pro­ Amendment was ratified, and the Constitu­ duction was in the national interest.'•' tion now prohibited the manufacture, sale, In the end, it was not just argument but and transportation of intoxicating liquors." incessant campaigning and political pressure The Constitution also provided that C>on- that finally produced ratification in Wiscon­ gress and the several states should have con­ sin. R. P. Hutton, Anti-Saloon League super- current power to enforce the article, although

'^''Kewaunee Enterprise, July 12, 26, August 2, 9, 1917, •^"Proceedings of the Nineteenth Convention of Ihe .-{nti- •'•'Thomas C, Cochran, The Pabst Brewing C^mipany: 'ihe Saloon League. 1919, p. 322; Odegard, Pressure Politics. Histoiy of an American BusinessCHewyork, 1948), 320; 'The 179-180. American Issue, Wisconsin Edition, April, 1918; Odegard, •^^The Anti-Saloon League Year Book. 1920. pp. 88, 212; Pressure Politics. 70. Merz, DiT Decade. 315-316,

f30 C;LAD: IOHN BAREEYCORN it specified no mechanism by which the con­ governor, his principal concern was with en­ current power might be exercised. While (con­ forcement of the law, and he believed new leg­ gress was working on an enforcement bill islation necessary. Introduced by Senator introduced by Congressman Andrew J. Vol­ Herman J. Severson of lola, a new law passed stead of Minnesota, the Wisconsin legislature the legislature and became effective on July 1, was deliberating a bill introduced by Senator 1921. In signing the Severson bill, Blaine Charles Mulberger of Watertown. Passed over noted that "there can be no invasion of the President Wilson's veto in October, 1919, the home or any spying on family life under the Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Code de­ bill, and it provides simplified machinery for fined as intoxicating any liquor containing 0.5 enforcement."'*'' per cent alcohol, and to the end that the use of such liquor might be prevented, trafficking in it was prohibited. Yet the law did not make the purchase of intoxicating liquor an act subject ITH legislation for carrying to prosecution. Other loopholes appeared in w out the intent of the Eigh­ the form of several important concessions to teenth Amendment in place, one must ask drinkers. In the privacy of their own homes how effectively it was enforced in Wisconsin. they could serve any intoxicating liquors ac­ Perhaps the most popular view of the Dry Dec­ quired before passage of the Volstead Act. ade is essentially the same as that advanced by The thirsty could also produce cider, fruit the student from Viroqua. It holds that viola­ jinces, and other drinks for use in their own tions of the law and of the Constitution were homes. Fhese beverages were to be consid­ flagrant, that during prohibition Americans ered intoxicating only if a jury in each case consumed more alcohol than ever before, and determined that they were intoxicating in fact, that flouting the Volstead Act betokened a dis­ whatever their alcoholic content. Finallv, the respect for all law which in turn encouraged Volstead Act permitted the sale of alcohol for the development of organized crime. This was medicinal, sacramental, and industrial pur­ an assessment that began taking shape shortly poses.'*^ after ratification of the Eighteenth Amend­ ment, and it has continued to be a common in­ In Wisconsin, the legislature passed the terpretation ever since. Mulberger Act in June, 1919. A disappoint­ When Wisconsin newspapers reported the ment to the drys, it legalized beer containing passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, many of 2.5 percent alcohol. Yet it also provided that them made it abundantly clear that they did the alcoholic content established by Congress not expect the state to become a Sahara. The was to be accepted under state law. And when Rhinelander New North innocuously reminded the United States Supreme Court upheld the readers that there was "still plenty of water in authority of Congress to define "intoxicating the old Wisconsin River," while the Pierce liquor," the Anti-Saloon League came out in County Herald of Ellsworth pointed out that support of the Mulberger Act. In a statewide "sweet cider time will have an added signifi­ referendum held at the time of November cance this season."*' A year later, with Con­ elections in 1920, citizens of W'isconsin voted gress setting up the machinery for prohibition overwhelmingly to approve the statute.'' enforcement, the Herald posed an editorial They also elected John J. Blaine as governor. query: "How's your dandelion wine coming?" Blaine was not ardently wet, but neither was Simultaneously, the Burlinglon Statidard- he an advocate of sumptuary legislation. As Democrat commented on the vain conceits of the Anti-Saloon League. "A beerless Milwau­ kee," noted the editor, "is like a beanless '''^(Congressional Record, 66 CvOng,, 1 sess,, 2139, 2281, 2301, 2426-2443, 2445-2486, 2552-2573, 277,5-2808, 2856-2905, 2949-2977, 2982, 3005, 3920, 4836-4852, 4892-4896, 4903-4908, 6681-6698, 6955, 7611, 7633- •'•'Capital Times (Madison), May 27, 1921; Milwaukee 7634; Anti-Saloon League Year Book, 1920, pp, 89-95; i>'m- Journal, ]une 7, 1921; Blaine to D, F, Burnham, June 30, cld'ir. Era of Excess, 168—169. 1921, Blaine to Annie Wyman Warren, February 10, ^'^Wisconsin Senate Journal, 1919, pp. 124:^-1262; Lnrcv 1925, and P—to Robert M. La Follette, Sr,,January, 1924, of Wisconsin, 1919, Chs. 556, 685; Robert S, Maxwell,/•>««- in the Blaine Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. nuel L. Philipp, Wisconsin Stalwart (Madison, 1959), 182- '"Rhinelande:^ New North, |ulv 3, 1919; Pierce County 183, Herald, ]\i\y'i,\9\9. 131 WUi(X3):57911 Artjanik's Balcony Inn, Thirty-third and Lincoln, Milwaukee, fnobably in August, 1933.

Boston—it can't be done. Milwaukeeans will 1922, the school board of Mercer in Iron have their favorite beverage even if thev ha\ e County complained to the governor that chil­ to brew it themselves,""' In 1921, the United dren going to and from school were "never States representative from Wisconsin's Sec­ free from the menace of moonshine crazed ond Congressional District, Edward Voigt of men." Without assistance in controlling the sit­ Sheboygan, articulated the same theme with uation, warned the school board, "we will be an emphatic variation. "I believe that there is justified in adopting some of the methods more bad whiskey consumed in the country used by the Klu [sic] Klux Klan."^^ today than there was good whiskey before we James A. Stone, a Reedsburg atU)rney and had prohibition," he wrote a constituent, "and former prohibition director for Wisconsin, ex­ of course we have made a vast number of liars pressed the fear that "the number of people and law violators through the Volstead Act."'" who are indulging in moonshine in small Both wets and drys were soon commenting places" was increasing during 1923. PerhajDS it on the ancillary effects of prohibition as well as was such small places that provided a market on the way it affected drinking habits. When a for products of the Perfect Finfoil Company former federal prohibition commissioner of New York. In 1927, Stone reported that the spoke in Medford to encourage respect for the firm was advertising "bottles, cartons, corks Volstead Act, he emphasized the pernicious andotheressentials to go with doctored gin. . . results of violating the law. "Moonshine," he and whiskey." It also offered for sale "cap­ contended in 1921, "is murdering many of ping machines, caps, and bottles stamped . . . our fellow citizens because the successful defi­ 'Hennesy [sic] Three Star,' 'Martell Three ance of law ... is encouraging general lawless­ Star' and 'Bacardi.' "'" For its part in the un- ness, such as bank robberies, automobile murders, assaults, and other crimes. In '"Taylor County Star-Neics. November 10, 1921. '•'Ida M, Harper, Fred E. Lee, and W. H, Hoffman lo •"^'Pierce County Herald. Julv 1, 1920; Burlinglon the (knernor. Attorney Cieneral, and State Superintend­ Standard-Democrat, Julv 2, 1920, ent of Schools, October 25, 1922, copy enclosed in James •"Voigt to Halbert Hoard, March. 1 1, 1921, in the Hal- .'\, Stone to William E, Evjue, August 14, 1926, in the bert L, Hoard Papers, State Historical Society of VViscon­ Stone Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. sin. The letter is quoted in David E. Kvvig, Repealing '"[ames A. Stone to Roy A, Haynes, April 16, 1927, in National Prohibition {Ch'icdgo. 1979), 2'r the Stone Papers.

132 GLAD: JOHN BARLEYCORN dercover trade, Wisconsin was able to offer a towns and cities, and in almost all of them alco­ commodity of its own in return. Eastern Wis­ holic beverages could be obtained with ease. consin gained fame during the twenties as the Volstead Act violators were treated in a home of package wort, a liquid made from straightforward, candid manner involving malt. The process of manufacturing beer few admonitions or recriminations. Buckley from wort is relatively simple, requiring attended police court in Superior and ob­ mainly the addition of yeast. served the daily collection of fines from pro­ By 1928, according to an article in the prietors of establishments selling booze. Burlington-Standard Democrat, Wisconsin was Before the judge had finished asking the de­ accounted "one of the wettest states west of the fendant how he pleaded, "the violator in each Alleghenies" despite the "thrift, industry and case would reach into his pocket, extract intelligence" of its citizens. Alcohol flowed therefrom a roll of bills, plead guilty, and among all classes in all parts of the state. "In place $200 on the desk."-'-' some of the staid, old communities. . . ," noted In Madison, the investigator visited the the Standard-Democrat, "one often finds old Bush and identified "an attractive young Ital­ fashioned places with the old mahogany and ian girl" as "the queen of the bootleggers." She the brass rail where beer is drawn at 25 cents a "catered exclusively to a fraternity house cli­ stein."-'' entele." At the University of Wisconsin, Buck­ To continue citing evidence of Volstead Act ley conferred with an assistant dean of violations would require several volumes, and women, who told him that she knew of "no many Americans found such reports of law­ drinking or revelry on the part of the young lessness disturbing. In one of his first acts as ladies under her supervision." Yet the dean president, Herbert Hoover in 1929 appointed impressed him "as one who would not be likely a commission to consider the problem of crim­ to be cognizant of such conditions.""* Igno­ inal justice and to make recommendations for rance of the lawbreaking, he implied, was in­ improving the administration of federal laws. dicative of exceptional naivete. "Soft drink Headed by George Wickersham, a former establishments, dispensing beverages of a United States attorney general, the commis­ harder variety than the name implies," flour­ sion completed its investigations in 1930, and ished not only in Madison, but also in Sheboy­ in January of the following year President gan, Manitowoc, Green Bay, Appleton, Hoover transmitted its report to Congress. Al­ Racine, and Kenosha. They flourished in though it did not suggest abandonment of the Fond du Lac, too, but in that city the authori­ "noble experiment," it did provide a vast ties frowned on "other forms of vice."''' Mil­ amount of information to reinforce the im­ waukee had the most efficient police force in pression that violations of the Volstead Act the state, according to the report, but in were endemic throughout the land. March, 1930, prohibition agents seized The Official Records of the Commission twenty-four large stills, one of which was caj^a- contained a section on Wisconsin, and if any­ ble of producing twenty-five gallons of 190- thing, it indicated that prohibition violations proof liquor an hour.''' were even more common than anyone Despite the amassing of such evidence, the thought. According to a summary table in the Wickersham Commission could not agree records, only twenty of Wisconsin's seventy- upon modification of the Eighteenth Amend­ one counties deserved to be called dry. (Even ment. Fwo commission members, Newton D. so, one wonders about the accuracy of the la­ Baker and Monte M. Leman, favored repeal­ bel. Viroqua is the county seat of Vernon ing the Amendment and returning to the County, which investigators reported as states the responsibility for liquor control. A dry.)''^ In any case, Frank Buckley, who con­ third, Henry W. Anderson, argued for adapt­ ducted the survey of Wisconsin, visited several ing Sweden's system of government-regulated liquor monopoly, and he won the support of '^'Burlington Standard-Democrat, October 26, 1928. several other commissioners, including Wick- '^National Commission on Law Observance and En­ forcement, Enforcement of Ihe Prohibition Laws: Official Re­ ••'^Ibid., 1102, cords of the National Commission on Law Observance and •'^Ibid., 1103. Enforcement (71 Cong., 3 sess.. Senate Dociuiient 307, vol­ ''''•Ibid, 110:^-1105, ume 4), 1100-1101. •"''Ibid., 1106. 133 „ir6.Ct •Tjfto m4§ "''mmt, •

,t

A bit of posturing at the Fuller and J ohnson Manufacturing Company's power and WHi (D487) 6987 light plant outing, Madison, about 1929. ersham. Shortly before Hoover released the action either constructive or courageous?" report, however, he announced that "the com­ queried The Naliim. "Is his treatment of the mission, by a large majority, does not favor the report in his message of transmittal even hon- repeal of the eighteenth amendment as a est?"^''^ method of cure for the inherent abuses of the liquor traffic." And he added, "I am in accord with this view."" What Hoover did, thought N the end, of course, the Eigh­ Walter Lippmann, "was to evade a direct and I teenth Amendment was re­ explicit official confession that federal prohi­ pealed; but that was after the coming of the bition is a hopeless failure." Other critics were '"Walter Lippmann, "Fhe (Jreat Wickersham Mvs- both puzzled and disappointed. "Is [Hoover's] tery," in Vanity Fair. April. 1931, 41-42; "Confusion Worse Cvonfounded," in The Nation. Februarv 4, 1931, Both are quoted in Kvvig, Repealing National Prohibition. '"Kyvig, Repealing National Prohibition, 1 K^-l 14. 114, 134 GEAD: JOHN BAREEYCORN

Great Depression and after Franklin D. "the will of the people as expressed in the ref­ Roosevelt had defeated Hoover in 1932. By erendum on the Wet and Dry question," and that time, several states had expressed formal identifying Lenroot as a tool of special inter­ disapproval of prohibition, and Wisconsin was ests, Blaine was successful. He served only one one of them. In 1926, Wisconsin had voted term, but before leaving office he proposed a overwhelmingly in favor of amending the Vol­ constitutional amendment for the repeal of stead Act to permit the manufacture and sale prohibition. Modified to satisfy the AAPA and of beer with 2.75 per cent alcohol. Only Con­ other antiprohibitionists, the Blaine resolu­ gress could amend the act, however, and little tion was quickly adopted and sent to the states. came of the referendum. In April, 1929, citi­ On December 5, 1933, Utah became the zens of Wisconsin voted to repeal the state's thirty-sixth state to ratify, and the 'Fwenty-first prohibition enforcement law, the Severson Amendment became a part of the Constitu­ Act.59 tion of the United States."' A major influence in the passage of these What remains to be said about the Dry Dec­ referencia was the Association Against the ade? In recent years, historians, sociologists, Prohibition Amendment. Under the leader­ and persons concerned with alcohol and drug ship of men such as Dr. J.J. Seelman, presi­ abuse have been taking a fresh look at Ameri­ dent of the Milwaukee Medical Society, and ca's experience with prohibition. Among Fred Pabst, a heavy contributor to wet cam­ other things, they have been making a good paigns, the AAPA devoted great energy to re­ case for a congeries of related arguments: that peal of the Severson Act. Governor Blaine, the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead harassed by the problems of prohibition en­ Act were not just foolish aberrations of forcement in Wisconsin, became a useful ally. narrow-minded puritans; that prohibition was As early as 1924, he was writing Fred Pabst: in fact far more effective in reducing ethanol Wisconsin has very good enforcement of consumption than what the foregoing discus­ the liquor laws, but if [the drys] are going sion might lead one to believe; that prohibi­ to have absolute prohibition they will tion modified American drinking habits and have to find some scheme of uprooting made possible the acceptance of moderation the grapevine, destroying the dandelion, as the norm; that prohibition largely elimi­ the clover, and the hundreds of fruits nated a foul and nefarious institution, the old- out of which is made wine; then, to make time saloon; and that the focus of attention the prohibition complete, the prohibi­ today should not be on the prohibitionists, but tion of the growing of corn, rye, barley, on the nature of alcohol narcosis and the rea­ and other grains out of which malt and sons for high rates of morbidity in some soci­ spirituous [sic] liquors may be made; and 62 then, to make the prohibition absolutely eties complete, it would be necessary to have a I have attempted to show that during the law tnat would destroy practically the en­ 1920's the drinking habits of many citizens of tire vegetable kingdom. And even when Wisconsin represented a rejection of coercive they got through with all this perfection, reform and sumptuary legislation. I would not inventive ingenuity of the human race argue that this state became a haven for soaks would probably be able to extract the and sots, bibbers and boozers. On the con­ necessary ingredients from the air, from the soil, or from the water.''" trary, what is impressive in the evidence is not

N 1926, Governor Blaine cam­ "'Clrant County Progressive Republican Committee to I paigned for the senate seat occu­ Fellow Voter of Crant County, campaign letter enclosed pied by Irvine Lenroot. Pledging loyalty to in Christianson to Blaine, October 28, 1926, Blaine Pa­ pers; Kys'i^, Repealing National Prohibition, 169—182, "^J, C, Burnham, "New Perspectives on the Prohibi­ tion 'Experirnent' of the 1920's," in the Journal of Social History, 2: 51-68 (Fall, 1968); Joseph R, Gusfield, 'Trohi- '•'National (x)nmiission on Law Observance and V.n- bition: The Impact of Political Utopianism," in John {orcemerw.. Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws. IV; 1098- Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds.. 1099, Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America: The ""Blaine to Pabst, October 3, 1924, in the Blaine Pa­ 1920's (Columbus, 1968), 271-308; Lender and Martin, pers, See also Blaine to James Couzens, Februarv 6, 1925, Drinking in America, 136—147; Clark, Deliver Usfrom Evil, ibid. 209-226. 135 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HESTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 the intensitv with which people violated the taken along and those who have a thirst Volstead Act in Wisconsin, but the modera­ have all the opportunities they could tion they exercised in breaking the law. One of wish for to quench it. The day is really an the Wickersham Commission's inxestigators interesting spectacle to witness, games was puzzled bv that very moderation. Wiscon­ are played, yarns are traded, old times and olci friends are recalled, and a good sin, he noted, had "large blocks of population time is had by all. When evening comes coming directly from countries such as Ger­ the three or four cars among the picnic many and Poland, where the use of alcohol is goers make three and four trips from the an almost universal custom." Yet he could not town to the lake so that all the people are explain "why there are not more open viola­ sure of getting to the lake and back tions of the law than are apparent." Perhaps, home. All the transportation is fur­ he thought, it was because "the German ele­ nished by the men who own the cars, and ment particularly were naturally inclined to no charge is made or asked of the peojile. orderliness and lawfulness."''' He had a point, Fhe remarkable thing about such a gath­ but I think his point could be applied to other ering is that the Italian people . . . can ethnic groups with equal force. cooperate with each other for a day and with such cooperation we have the func­ At the University of Wisconsin, our \'iro- tioning to perfection of a social group.'"' qua student had a classmate from Lohr\ ille in Waushara County. Swedes and Italians were The Lohrville Italians were breaking the the first to arrive there in large numbers, and law, to be sure, but who would wish to raid the Italians of Lohrville, like the Italians of their picnic and confiscate their wine? The su- Madison, were highly skilled stonecutters. In a perpatriots who had once identified Wiscon­ section of his paper de\'oted to leisure-time sin as the "traitor state" might do so, but like activities, this scholarly son of Italian jjarents the prohibitionists that many of them became, described the way Italian families would get they took the trouble to understand neither together three or four times during the sum­ the richness of Wisconsin's ethnic heritage, mer season and spend a day at the lake. Fhis is nor the ties that span social cleavages to allow what he wrote: for the building of true community, the kind of community that unites this state, Each family furnishes their own meals, and a keg [of] beer and plenty of wine are "^Eugene (jappeletti, "A Regional Survey of Lohrville, Wisconsin," paper in Student Records, Experimental Col­ "•'National Commission on Law Obser\ance and En­ lege, Class 4 (1930-1932), College of Letters and Science, forcement. Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws, 1; 59, Uni\ersitv of Wisconsin Archives, Madison,

f36 READING AMERICA

Kahn on Codes: Secrets of the New Crjptology. By of cryptography occurred in Egyj:)tian reli­ DAVID KAHN. (Macmillan Publishing Com­ gious books of occult wisdom attributed to a pany, New York, 1984, Notes, index. Pp. viii, mythical priest, Hermes 4 rismegistus. (Such 343. ISBN 0-02-560640-9, $19.95.) was the fascination with his works that Her- metical philosophy was popular in seven­ Do mysteries intrigue you? Do you enjoy teenth-century Europe and is still followed to­ solving word puzzles? When you were young day by some believers in the occult.) did you use lemon juice to write secret mes­ If cryptography was spiritually useful to an­ sages to your best friend? If your answer to cient priests for preserving an air of mysticism any of these questions is "Yes," then Kahn on about their religion, it was pragmatically use­ Codes will fascinate you by leading you on a ful in waging war against one's enemies. Early brief foray into the captivating realm of cryptographic methods were crude, but cryptology—"the scientific study of cryptogra­ clever. A Persian shaved a slave's head, tat­ phy and cryptanalysis." tooed onto the skin a message urging his David Kahn has been an avid student of brother-in-law, a local governor, to revolt, secret writing since he was thirteen. He is the waited for the hair to grow back, then sent the author of The Codebreakers (1967), the first slave off with the message. Spartan magis­ comprehensive history of cryptology, and trates wrapped a strip of leather around a Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in wooden staff, wrote their orders down its World WarII, and is a founder and co-editor of length, unwound the leather, thus scrambling the scholarly quarterly (h'yptologia. Fhe artic­ the letters, and dispatched it to the general in les in this collection, written over the j^ast the field who wrapped it around a pole of twenty years, originally appeared in such di­ identical dimensions to "decode" the message. verse publications as Foreign Affairs, The Neiv The first "codebreakers" did not appear York Tirties, Playboy, Historical Journal, and Ciy- until the ninth century, A.D., when the Arabs ptologta. began to discover and record the principles of Many people associate cryptology with mys­ cryptanalysis. (Cryptanalysis involves analyz­ ticism and the occult. C^ryptography, "the art ing the frequency of recurring letters or sym­ or practice of preparing or reading messages bols to discover a pattern which may provide in a form intended to prevent their being read clues to commonly used letters or words in the by those not privy to the secrets of the form," has its roots in the C^reek word, "crypt," mean­ ing "to hide." Historians believe cryptography MARY LOU M. SCHULTZ is a free-lance editor and book re­ viewer. She holds a bachelor's degree in American history is as old as writing itself and that early on it was from the University of Wisconsin and has done postgrad­ equated with such divinatory techniques as as­ uate work in American history and urban affairs at Boston trology and palmistry. One of the earliest uses University, Copyright © 198} by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 137 All rights of reproduction in airy form resemed WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 original language, such as "e" or "the" in En­ gists hailed him as "the father of American glish.) But, as Christianity spread and the cryptography." Arab empire contracted, so too did knowledge Kahn has nominated Hans-Fhilo Schmidt in all mathematical and scientific fields. Dur­ as "the spy who most affected World War II." ing the 1200's the Papal States and Italian city- Failure, hedonist, and dissipate, Schmidt states revived systematic use of encoded nonetheless left his mark on history by smug­ correspondence, but another two hundred gling the operating manuals for Germany's years would pass before Europe rediscovered Enigma machine to a French Intelligence the principles of cryptanalysis. Service officer, who, in turn, spirited them to With the rise of European nation-states three brilliant Polish mathematicians who fig­ during the Renaissance, secret writing flour­ ured out the theoretical principles undergird- ished as ambassadtM's in foreign capitals, re­ ing the Enigma code. porting on local political events and activities, Since the British declassified Enigma- shuttled coded messages to their monarchs. related documents and materials in the early Bv the 1700's most of the monarchies had es­ 1970's, a spate of articles and books have re­ tablished clandestine mail-opening and counted the story of the Engima solution and cipher-solving centers known as "black cham­ analyzed its impact on the war. But this was bers." (Kahn does not speculate, as well he not the only instance in which "history has might, that as with "cryptology," the term sometimes pivoted on whether someone could "black chamber" probably has occult origins.) make sense out of a senseless group of letters." The history of code-making and -breaking The United States has scored several minor has moved in a series of mathematical ancl and major triumphs in cryptanalysis since the technological leaps. Early transposition ci­ beginningof World War II. In 1942 American phers (scrambling the letters in a word: "A'l- cryptanalysis broke the main Japanese naval TACK" becomes "'FTAKCA") ga\'e wav to code, a feat that turned the course of the Pa­ monoalphabetic substitutions (the letters of cific war in our favor. In the 1950's code- the original message are replaced by other let­ breakers solved two Soviet ciphers and in the ters or symbols: "A'F'FACK" may become late 1960's they cracked Che Guevara's cipher. "ZGGXP"). The science of secret writing One cannot help but suspect that intriguing bounded ahead in the middle of the fifteenth as these stories are, thev are but di\ersions century when mathematician Leon Battista from Kahn's primary purpose, whicfi is to al­ Alberti developed a polyalphabetic substitu­ ert the reader to the controversy swirling tion system, still used by today's computerized about cryptology and intelligence operations electronic cipher machines. Transmission of today. The emergence of cryptography from encoded messages changed little until the in­ behind secret government doors into the pub­ vention of the telegrajjhv, which [jresented a lic arena of commerce and nongovernmental new problem: not only did one risk having an research has sparked spirited debates about occasional message intercepted, as always had national security versus individual freedom. been the case, but one's enemies ntnv could In essays that occasionally ring shrill, Kahn intercept all messages. The disastrous conse­ lays out for the reader some of the problems quences of such unimpeded tapping became spawned by the communicatitjns re\olution of e\ident with the invention of radio and its use the past quarter centurv-. during the World Wars when the Allies Computers and satellites communicate by cracked German and Japanese codes and used means of microwaves. About 70 per cent of the information to de\elop their own battle long distance calls in the United States travel plans. o\er microwaves. Computers use them to In addition to these tidbits of cryptologic "talk" to each other. Microwaves are easy to history strewn throughout the articles, one intercept and computers have made it possible also encounters brief biographies of imjjor- to target individual calls. A growing trend to tant figures in cr\jjtology and chronicles of encode computer communications that busi­ specific cases of cryptanalysis. Kahn intro­ nesses or individuals would like to keep pri­ duces the reader to the dazzling but episodic vate has led to a surge in private crvptological career of Herbert O. Yardley, author of The research. American Black Chamber (\9'5\), in which he de­ Public dabbling in cryptology has alarmed scribed his cryptologic work for the federal the National Securit\' Agency from its incep­ government during World War I and the tion in 1952. As the Cold War heated up. Pres­ 1920's. Upon Yardley's death in 1958, eulo- ident Harry S. Truman agreed to unify the 138 SCHULTZ: READING AMERICA various code-making and -breaking agencies to NSA. Firms that have adopted the system that had evolved during World War II into a finally approved by the NSA and the National central agency that would serve every branch Bureau of Standards can protect their com­ of government. Established without a Con­ munications from competitors, but not from gressional charter defining its boundaries, the the government. NSA remains the ctmntry's premier The revolution in communications technol­ intelligence-gathering agency. As the largest ogy and the debate over who should control it intelligence agency in the Free World, the and who should be allowed access to it has pro­ NSA employs 20,000 rigorously screened per­ voked several disquieting questions, as Kahn sonnel (over 100,000, counting assigned mili­ points out; "Should free inquiry be allowed in tary personnel), maintains a worldwide the field [of cryptology], or are its implications network of 2,000 radio stations to monitor the for national security so great and so sensitive coded communications of virtually every that research should be controlled by the gov­ country in the world, has assembled perhaps ernment?" "How can one balance the conflict­ the world's largest concentration of com­ ing demands of naticmal security and puters under one roof, uses planes, ships, and individual freedom?" "f s it paradoxical to seek satellites to monitor international communica­ public resolution of a matter that deals in se­ tions, and costs several billion dollars per year crets?" to operate. Obviously there are no simple answers to As the United States' ultra-secret these questions. Both branches of Congress intelligence-gathering agency, the NSA has have sprouted a host of committees since the shunned publicity as earnestly as it has sought early 1970's to investigate American intelli­ to maintain a monopoly of power. Beginning gence activities and to wrestle with the moral with Watergate, however, Americans' peri­ and legal issues involved. In 1975, Senate In­ odic peeks beneath the NSA's mantle of se­ telligence Committee chairman Senator crecy have shaken the public's trust that the Frank Church warned: "[The NSA's] capabil­ government supports the sjjirit of, as well as ity to monitor anything . . . could be turned the laws guaranteeing, individual freedom. around on the American people ancl no During the Nixon administration the NSA co­ American would have any privacy left. Fhere operated with the Federal Bureau of Investi­ would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever gation and the Central IntelligenceAgency in took charge in this country, the technological spying on Americans by wiretapping their capability that the intelligence community has phones and reading overseas cables. The NSA given the government could enable it to im­ routinely monitors all international calls and pose total tyranny." cables. With computers commonplace in the mar­ In the mid-1970's the NSA tangled with ketplace and increasingly so in American IBM and two Stanford University scientists homes, these questions and Church's tocsin engaged in developing a common encryption demand public attention and debate. Kahn on code for businesses that were switching over to Codes, as well as James Bamford's detailed in­ computer communication. Fhe NSA sup­ vestigation of the NSA, The Puzzle Palace pressed the professors' ingenious new code (1982), are excellent places for the concerned and pressed upon the country's commercial citizen to begin inquiry into the problems pro­ interests a simpler code that was virtually un­ voked by the communications revolution in breakable by other businesses, but accessible computer technology.

139 BOOK REVIEWS

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Research Guide to Archival of pages, number of words, descriptors, and Sources. Bv PATRICK J. MEEHAN. (Garland, review. Of the last two, descriptors gives the New York,' 1983. ISBN 0-8240-9342-9. Pp. vii, names of persons, organizations, places, etc., 681. Illustrations, notes, bibliographies, indi­ that are mentioned and review provides a cap­ ces. $100.00.) sule summary of the contents. Each entry (517 in all) is numbered, and the numbers are Any skepticism I may harbor about bibliog­ keyed to four indices at the end of the book: raphies as rather mechanical and sometimes buildings, designs, projects and places; names, sterile compilations, even when annotated, is titles and topics; correspondents; and archives largely disfjelled by Patrick Meehan's book. Its and collections. Meehan further divides this 681 pages provide an introduction to archival listing into seven chronological periods begin- materials relating to the life, work, and ning'with the Early Years (1894-1910) and thought of one of Wisconsin's most famous ending with the Last Golden Years (1950- native sons. Not onh' is the book a thorough 1959). For each unit he provides a short but study of the holdings of over fifty archives useful summary of the main points of Wright's which contain manuscripts by Wright, but it is life and work during that period of time. This presented in an eminently usable form. includes such data as the number of designs Part I consists of a 104-page discussion of the holdings of each of the archives in which Meehan found rele\'ant materials. 1 hese in­ clude not only the expected letters, manu­ Special Book Orders scripts, drawings, and similar documents from Wrights own hand, but also architectural frag­ The Society will order an;y book currentl)- ments, furniture and furnishings, copies of offered by any American publisher at a letters by clients, friends and other persons discount of 10 per cent, for both written to Wright, and drawings by other de­ members and non-members. Please signers such as Milwaukee's George supply the author's name, the full title, Niedecken that relate to projects by Wright. and (if known) the publisher. Write to: Most inventive perhaps is the second sec­ tion where Meehan arranges each letter, Special Book Orders, 816 State Street, voucher, manuscript, telegram, and Christ­ Madison, Wisconsin 53706. A special mas card by Wright in chronological order. In handling charge of $1.50 will be levied presenting each of these items Meehan follows on each complete order. Please do not send a commendable format, apparently of his own payment with your order; the Society will ship invention: date, type of manuscript, to, from and bill you when the order is fulfilled. (always Wright, of course, but the place is given also), collection, medium, size, number

140 BOOK REVIEWS projected and the number actually executed, ings on Wright (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massa­ and persons with whom Wright corresponded chusetts, 1981), 129-130. at that time. Following each section there is a Even though it should by now be clear that I short list of books and articles about Wright am generally impressed with the results of and his work during the years covered, and Meehan's labors, this does not mean that the beginning with the year 1914, there are news­ book is without fault. But by calling attention paper articles discovered by Meehan not listed to what are minor failings—which I believe by earlier bibliographers and scholars. not unreasonable when the prospective Accompanying each section are photo­ reader will have to part with $100 to own a graphs of selected buildings by Wright, many copy—I do not mean to discredit in the least of which were made by the author. However, the overall importance of Meehan's work or considering the highly sophisticated audience his accomplishments as already noted. to which this book is most likely to appeal, First of all, there is the price. For $100 one these poorly reproduced, rather common­ would hope that all efforts had been ex­ place illustrations seem rather to detract than hausted in ferreting out archival materials re­ add to the otherwise generally high quality of lating to Wright anci his work. But, alas, this is the book. not the case, and Meehan's book turns out to Seven difficult-to-date manuscripts appear be only the beginning. This is especially obvi­ as Appendix A. An exhaustive chronological ous when, on opening the tx)ok, you discover list of projects and executed buildings by that while Meehan discusses the collection of Wright forms Appendix B. Perhaps more in­ the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, it is just teresting than the chronology, however, are as clear that none of its holdings are listed in three pages of graphs, one for each year of the book. Thus, even though Meehan's chro­ Wright's productive life, that show compara­ nology of documents contains 524 items, these tively and in figures, the projects, executed pale by comparison with the riches owned by buildings, and total number of designs for the foundation which, according to Meehan, each year of practice. contain "more than 19000 Frank Lloyd In addition to the general value of Wright drawings, thousands of letters, hun- Meehan's archival survey for merely gather­ drecls of original manuscripts, numerous pho­ ing together in one place the assorted rem­ tographs, as well as related materials, belong­ nants of Wright's seventy-year career in archi­ ing to or . . . housed by the Frank Lloyd tecture, we are indebted to Meehan for Wright Foundation." Clearly Meehan's book guiding us through these collections in so is only the tip of an archival iceberg. Hopefully effective and useful a manner. I am also the Wright Foundation will soon complete its pleased to find that every so often the author work of cataloging and photographing the en­ calls to the attention of scholars the need for tire collection so that some day, not too far off, additional study where documents do not the stage will be set for a multivolume catalog agree with established wisdom or where the perhaps based on Meehan's example, of the author points to the importance of newly un­ archives of Taliesin West. earthed documents. Perhaps the least satisfactory part of The latter, incidently, seem especially to be Meehan's book is his compiled chronology of those in the collection of the Library of Con­ buildings, designs, and projects. To me it gress, which apparently have gone largely un­ seems almost naive for him to suppose that the noticed. Of special interest are the lectures, wc:)rld needs one more undocumented, chron­ speeches, and articles collected by Frederick ological list of Wright's buildings. Fo be sure, Gutheim when he was preparing his Frank Meehan's list does not appear any more inac­ Lloyd Wright on Architecture: Selected Writings, curate or bizzare than the five other lists that 1894-1940 (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New he mentions as serving as his point of depar­ York, 1941), many of which evidently have ture. And, in fact, he claims to have gone be­ never been published. But the letters in the yond them by using "published drawings, Mies van der Rohe papers are also of particu­ books, periodicals, newspapers, and original lar interest for they indicate that Wright and manuscripts and correspondence." .Although Mies were rather friendly during the late Meehan doesn't claim to be a scholar, it seems I940's (already suggested by Mies' laudatory to me that I would be remiss in not faulting him remarks about Wright published in the College when he implies he has used scholarly meth­ Art Journal, IV: 41^2 (Autumn, 1946), and re­ ods for such obvious errors as the misdating of cently reprinted by H. Allen Brooks in Writ­ the Mrs. Thomas Gale House, which he gives 141 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 as 1904. In fact, it was designed in 1909 ac­ ina and enthusiasm to search out and catalog cording to abundant documentary evidence, the public collections that contain documents including Meehan's own entry B42 (which he about Wright and, as well, the private holdings seems to have overlooked when preparing his of materials written by, to, or about Wright. chronology). There in the contract of Septem­ The way to begin would be to start tracking ber 22, 1909, between Wright and Herman down all of Wright's clients or their descen­ Von Hoist, the Gale house is listed with other dants or the archival collections which house commissions that are either under construc­ their papers. At the same time, a search for tion or projected. and through the papers of anyone known or I also noticed one similar error in Meehan's thought to have corresponded with Wright chronological listing of manuscripts by should be undertaken. The result might well Wright. Whether or not there are other such be another useful volume or two of the kind errors, I cannot say. In entry B24 Meehan that Meehan has given us that, like Meehan's dated a letter from Wright to Ludington con­ impressive work, will complement the records cerning the Smith Bank at Dwight, Illinois, as of the Wright Foundation when they are at last January 25, 1907, because (I presume) in the fully cataloged and revealed to an anxious letter Wright mentions that he is leaving for world of Wright aficionados and scholars. Japan on February 15, 1907. The date, how­ ever, must be a misreading for there is no PAUL E. SPRAGUE question that Wright's trip to Japan took place University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee in 1905, as Meehan's entry B13 so clearly indi­ cates: it is Wright's passport dated February 9, 1905. A Family Concern: Marathon Savings and Loan In compiling his research guide, Meehan Association. By HOWARD R. KLUETER. (Wor- had naturally to make some choices about zalla Publishing Company, Stevens Point, Wis­ what ought to be presented and how. One de­ consin, 1984. Pp. X, 386. Illustrations, notes, cision was not to include manuscripts in pri­ bibliography, appendices. $7.95.) vate collections not generally open to the }3ub- lic. Well and good, but why then does he list in A Family Concern is an academic study of his chronological catalog manuscripts that are savings and loan associations, using the Mara­ presumably in private collections but which thon Savings and Loan Association (MSL) of have been published, such as the ones that ap­ Wausau, Wisconsin, as a grass-roots example. pear in books by Edgar Tafel and Paul and The book will appeal primarily to economic Jean Hanna? I am glad that he did list them, historians. It will also interest past and present but to have done so without explanation seems MSL employees and their families. Many arbitrary and inconsistent. former and current employees, officers, and Although Meehan here and there in his directors are the subject of interesting bio­ studies or archives mentions copies of letters graphical sketches and photographs in the to Wright, he nonetheless confines his chro­ volume. nology strictly to writings by the architect him­ Author Howard Klueter places the 1902 self. Again, he does not tell us why. Letters to formation of MSL in the context of the coop­ Wright or to other persons that mention erative movement so popular among midwest­ Wright are surely as important for under­ ern farmers at the time. It is initially viewed by standing the man and his work as are letters the author as a "cooperative" for capitalist written by Wright himself. For example, I lumber barons and their merchant allies, know of a large public collection of copybook ranging from paper mill magnates to shoe letters, many of which are either addressed to merchants. MSL was originally named the Wright or else comment on him or his work. Marathon County Building, Loan, and Invest­ These are obviously important documents for ment Association. Fhe early MSL officers and understanding and assessing the man and his directors were mostly prominent, wealthy, work, yet even had Meehan know of them, it self-made men, many of them from German would appear that by his own choice he would immigrant families. have passed them up. During World War I, MSL actively com­ What Meehan thus excluded from his own peted with the United States government's research may well become the basis for contin­ war bond drives for deposit money, for mo­ ued archival investigations. 'Fhe need now, I tives which were both economic and ethnic in think, is for someone with the necessary stam- origin. MSL prospered in the 1920's because it 142 BOOK REVIEWS invested in stable housing loans. It survived as publishing a more modest account by a sen­ the Great Depression of the 1930's by re­ ior administrator. Now, after a century and a financing loans, reducing borrower's stock quarter, it has brought the record up to date in subscriptions, and lowering dividend pay­ The Quiet Company byjohn Gurda. ments. Foreclosure was used only as a last re­ The author is a Milwaukee native, steeped sort. And, Klueter emphasizes, the creation of in the history and lore of Northwestern's the Federal Home Loan Bank Board by Presi­ home town. By training a cultural geogra­ dent Herbert Hoover in 1932 was of invalu­ pher, he has established credentials as a histo­ able help to MSL and other financial institu­ rian of Milwaukee neighborhoods, to which tions in maintaining solvency throughout the studies he has brought an unusual capacity to Depression. combine documentary research with oral his­ Because of the reduced loan demands dur­ tory and an exceptional sense of place and ing World War II, which were induced by a people. shortage of "critical materials," MSL pur­ Gurda's history recapitulates the compa­ chased a large volume of war bonds. Those ny's first ninety years in a long introductory bonds provided the cash reserves to finance chapter and its next ten in a shorter second the housing construction boom in the postwar chapter, totaling less than 30 per cent of the decades. The "annual assets" section of the text. Here he has depended largely on earlier book's appendix shows that MSL's assets accounts, but with the same emphasis on peo­ finally returned to the 1929 pre-depression ple, rather than balance-sheet and profit-and- levels by 1950. loss statements, which characterize his four Klueter's research and footnoting are both chapters on the last quarter century. extremely thorough. Divergent matters of in­ Gurda views the first decade of the compa­ terest to economic historians and to MSL em­ ny's second century as relatively easy, as he ployees do not interfere with each other in the also finds the nation's experience to have book. Klueter smoothly integrates everything been, but with a foreboding of great changes from discussions of topics such as banking reg­ to come. He divides his description and analy­ ulations and the nineteenth-century English sis of the period 1967—1979 into two aspects— origins of the savings and loan concept to de­ the internal changes resulting from new man­ scriptions of subjects such as Myrtle Mc­ agement styles and new managers, and those Carthy's 1947 retirement banquet and the impelled by forces external to the company, "understandably nervous" reception with including the impact of the political, eco­ which the office staff greeted the 1971 intro­ nomic, and social turmoil in the nation and the duction of MSL's first computer. world with which we are still contending. He admits that we are too close to the early 1980's RICHARD C. HANEY to make a proper assessment of their direction University of Wisconsin—Whitewater for the company, but its history reassures him that the company will continue to change while remaining essentially the same sound entity. The Quiet Company: A Modern History of North­ Unlike the scholarly study of its hrst cen­ western Mutual Life. By JOHN GURDA. (The tury by Williamson and Smalley, this history Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Com­ seems more concerned with the human equa­ pany, Milwaukee, 1983. ISBN 0-9612020-0-2. tion. Gurda identifies and characterizes all of Pp. vii, 334. Illustrations, bibliography, ap­ the major figures in company management pendices, index. No price listed.) for the last quarter century (and to some de­ gree for a decade or more before that) because The Northwestern Mutual Life, headquar­ of his major dependence on the personal testi­ tered in Milwaukee since 1859, has been un­ mony of nearly sixty employees and agents. usually conscious of its long and honorable re­ Changes and developments in company poli­ cord as one of the nation's largest and most cies and practices are related to the persons efficient hfe insurers. In 1908, a year after its who conceived, initiated, or carried them out. fiftieth anniversary, it published a short narra­ Because the company, as a company and tive history, and for its centennial observance through these individuals, was a "good citi­ in 1957 it commissioned a major study by zen" in Milwaukee and was involved in the de­ Northwestern University professors Harold velopment of a vastly expanded headquarters F. Williamson and Orange A. Smalley, as well as part of Milwaukee's downtown renaissance, 143 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 much of this history is integral to Milwaukee's separately? Separate displays, some argued, own recent past. Gurda sees the company demeaned women's achievements, suggesting quite as much a segment of Milwaukee as he that women could not compete successfully viewed the city's neighborhoods which he with men. Proponents of separate exhibits, studied previously. If the company may be most notably Palmer, feared that in combining said to have been challenged, and even buffe­ women's and men's displays the importance of ted, by the large national and international women's contributions would not be recog­ forces at work since World War II, it may also nized. The decision to erect a separate Wom­ be said to have been one of the creators of the an's Building did not end the dispute. Several new Milwaukee growing up around it. The women refused to display in the W^oman's Quiet Company, despite the company's nation­ Building; insufficient space in the building wide marketing and investment network, is forced some women's exhitiits into other unimaginable outside of its setting in Milwau­ buildings. Among other interesting issues. kee. Fair Women documents the discussions and de­ A final note on the sources: Gurda has util­ bates, the personalities and in-fighting that lay ized not only earlier published and unpub­ behind the ultimate positioning of many ex­ lished histories, but the extensive printed and hibits. manuscript records of the company; he has Weimann details the board's financial ar­ thoroughly exploited the recollections of com­ rangements, their successful fight to have the pany personnel; and he has consulted an ade­ building designed and decorated by women quate range of writings on Milwaukee history artists, and the means they used to encourage and the life insurance industry. Presumably in contributions from states and foreign coun­ deference to his intended primary audience— tries. The women planned to make the build­ company employees and agents as well as ing educational and to show women's achieve­ those interested in Milwaukee history—he has ments in all fields. The fine arts gallery not felt impelled to provide footnotes, but displayed the work of American and foreign most readers will find little difficulty in identi­ artists, including sketches by Queen Victoria. fying his sources. Twenty-three pages of ap­ The building housed ethnological exhibits, pendices conveniently list names of trustees, borrowed from the Smithsonian after much employees, agents and a limited amount of haggling, and needlecraft, basketry, and pot­ statistics on finances. The index reads like a tery from around the globe. The library dis­ who's who for Milwaukee. There are fifty-one played thousands of books written by women pages of illustrations. and also statistical surveys investigating wom­ en's occupations. I he inventions room con­ FREDERIC:K I. OESON tained various devices women had patented. University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee Weimann describes the formidable work un­ dertaken by Palmer and her associates in col­ lecting and displaying the 80,000 exhibits. But, despite Weimann's obvious love for The Fair Women: The Stoiy of the Woman's Build­ her subject. Fair Women is not a totally success­ ing, World's (Jolumbian Exposition, Chicago, ful book. The reader is often lost in a morass 1893. Bv JEANNE MADELINE WEIMANN. (Acad- of details; interesting but extraneous material emv Chicago, Chicago, 1981. ISBN 0-915864- frequently interrupts the flow of the narrative. 67-3, cloth; 0-89733'-025-0, paper. Pp. x, 611. Partly because she views the fair through the Illustrations, notes, select bibliographv, index. eyes of the organizers and also because she is $29.95, cloth: $14.95, paper.) immersed in these details, Weimann loses sight of the important implications of the Even before Congress chose the site of the story. Who visited the building? Was the edu­ 1893 Fair, Chicago women were determined cational goal of the organizers achieved? The to participate. The bill granting Chicago the fair brought together large numbers of honor of hosting the fair also established a women from all across the country. What was Board of Lady Managers. Bertha Palmer, so­ the effect of this congregation? For example, cialite and member of the Chicago W'omen's the first national nursing organization, the Club, a philanthropic and social reform orga­ American Society of Superintendents of nization, was elected president. The first ques­ Training Schools for Nursing, grew out of a tion faced was: should women's work be ex­ meeting at the fair. (Weimann mentions the hibited with that of men or be housed nurses at the fair but seems unaware of the 144 BOOK REVIEWS significance of their presence there to the de­ Bringer of War" in the 1958 collection that in velopment of the society.) How many other firing on Fort Sumter the Confederates "did professional organizations can trace their ori­ not necessarily become the aggressors" ap­ gins to formal and informal meetings in Chi­ pears here in "The Confederates and the First cago in f893? Shot" as the more pointed charge that the bur­ In addition, Weimann has been ill-served den of proof, if not full responsibility for the by her editor and publisher. The editor, Anita war, rests on Jefferson Davis and his partisans. Miller, states that the original manuscript re­ Similarly the Whig outlines of his original ferred to women by their last names; she sketch of Lincoln as "The Master Politician" (Miller), over the objections of the author, acquire solidity and definition in new essays added the dtles "Miss" and "Mrs." What other carefully placing Lincoln between his mentors editorial decisions altered the author's intents Henry Clay and Daniel Webster on one side and ideas? Fhe book is amply illustrated; how­ and his radical rival, Thaddeus Stevens, on the ever, captions are neither consistent nor com­ other. Throughout these several reassess­ plete. Fair Women is not easy to read or ade­ ments one hears echoes of earlier suggestions quately documented. Fhe book contains and musings reverberating in the mind of a extensive quotations and paraphrases with no seasoned scholar who is still intrigued by the footnotes or endnotes, though some citations puzzling and seemingly contradictory aspects are buried in the confusing bibliographic of Lincoln's politics and personality. notes. Despite these flaws. Fair Women is a In all of these thoughtful essays the author comprehensive history of the Board of Lady is concerned with the problem of the meaning Managers of Chicago's 1893 fair, of its strug­ of Lincoln for a variety of late-twentieth- gles, of its internal dissension, of its accom­ century American publics. One of his lectures plishments. And this material is important for confronts the charges of racism leveled by developing a better understanding of wom­ black Americans disturbed by Lincoln's fre­ en's roles in late-nineteenth-century Ameri­ quently expressed doubts about equality. Ad­ can society. mitting the justice of some of these charges. Current proceeds to modify them by setting RIMA D. APPLE the record straight in tracing the movement of University of Wisconsin—Madison Lincoln's thought from "the position he started from" to "the position he was going to." To tradition-steeped white Southerners Speaking of Abraham Lincoln: The Man and His seeking to claim the moderate Lincoln as their Meaning for Our Times. By RIC:HARD NELSON own he offers a corrective view of him as the CURRENT. (University of Illinois Press, Ur­ supreme Westerner, the embodiment of an bana, 1983. ISBN 0-252-01056-6. Pp. i, 196. emergent national will. The lowered vitality of Notes, index. $17.50.) this liberal nationalism and the threats to it posed by fragmenting interest groups today is This book, as its title indicates, is a collection Current's particular concern. In perhaps the of occasional talks given between 1955 and most interesting essay in the collection, 1982; and their connecting theme, as the sub­ "Unity, Ethnicity, and Abraham Lincoln," he title makes equally clear, concerns the contin­ follows the declining interest in Lincoln uing availability of Abraham Lincoln today. among American ethnics as the myth of the Eight of the eleven pieces are reprinted here, self-made man, so appealing to the first gener­ having been previously published in both pop­ ation, gives way to today's "tribalistic dreams" ular and scholarly journals, and three appear retailed by minorities in search of different for the first time. roots. Yet if the appeal to the Lincoln example These brief excursions into the world of by twentieth-century presidents is any mea­ Abraham Lincoln inevitably call to mind the sure, their predecessor is in no danger of be­ results of Professor Current's earlier expedi­ ing forgotten. Current's amusing and more tion. The Lincoln Nobody Knoius (1958), which than slightly ironic essay, "The Lincoln Presi­ were recorded in profiles of the private man as dents," offers a reassuring range of wish- well as more formal portraits of the public fulfillment: the fearless leader free of a "dis­ figure. In the present volume Current takes eased morality" and equipped with "keen, up a number of the themes and questions practical good sense" (Theodore Roosevelt); posed in the earlier essays for reexamination the "lonely spirit living apart who saw visions and reappraisal. Thus his admission in "The where no man looked" (Woodrow Wilson); 145 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985 the tough old pro with "the guts to go ahead" Institutional histories, particularly those of (Harry S. Truman); the man of courage who the in-house variety, and those published in knew that "doubts can lead to disaster" and celebration of an anniversary, are difficult to "never permitted his anguish and his doubt to write. How can one be loyal and yet critical of ever deter him from acting" (Lyndon B.John­ one's alma mater or employer? Since the study son); and, finally, "the very competitive man" can be written only with institutional coopera­ who "never gave up" (Richard M. Nixon). tion and possibly institutional funding, how Such tributes, discordant as they surely are, can one be objective? Nonetheless, such testify to the continuing good health of an en­ studies are useful foundations upon which to during Lincoln. construct major studies dealing with higher education. JOHN L. THOMAS The author has drawn his story from year­ Brown University books, newspapers, archival materials, and oral interviews. Stylistically, it is laced with quotations and lists of students and faculties and their achievements. It chronicles the his­ Jubilee! A History of the College of Engineering, tory of the College of Engineering, with its The University of Wisconsin-Platteville, 1908— major teaching stars, outstanding students, 1983. By THO.MAS B. LUNDEEN. (University of and successful alumni. It includes discussions Wisconsin-Platteville, 1983. Pp. x, 143. Illus­ of the organization of the department, its trations, appendices, notes, bibliography, in­ growth, the strategy in planning, its adminis­ dex. $5.00.) tration, and prospects for the future. One can hardly expect such a study to com­ Thomas B. Lundeen, professor of history pete with major monographs for scholarly at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, has revelations or broad appeal. It is, after all, written a history of the engineering school in written for those associated with the school observance of the diamond jubilee of the insti­ who enjoy reading about their own years and tution which became the University of those of their predecessors and successors. It Wisconsin-Platteville. Founded in 1908 as the achieves its goal. Wisconsin Mining Trade School, it was pri­ marily designed to train engineers to operate GEENJEANSONNE the lead and zinc mines in the area of south­ University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee western Wisconsin. Originally a trade school, it subsequently became a mining school and an Institute of Fechnology before merging with the Normal School in Platteville and later be­ The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840. coming a part of the state university system. By R. CARLYEE BUEEY. (Indiana University The straightforward narrative is sprinkled Press, Bloomington, in association w ith the In­ with anecdotes, descriptions of student pranks diana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 1983. and minibiographies of outstanding students Originally published by the Indiana Historical and teachers. 'Fhere is a wealth of stories about Society, Indianapolis, 1950. ISBN 0-253- the legendary George ("Dobbie") Dobson, a 34168-X. 'Fwo volumes: vol. 1, pp. xvi, 632; professor of chemistry and football coach vol. 2, pp. X, 686. Illustrations, maps, notes, from 1909 to 1947. Student trainers provided bibliography, index. $40.00.) Dobbie's teams with brandy-laced coffee at halftime, which the coach could not detect be­ It is an unusual and somewhat intimidating cause his habitual cigar overpowered all other assignment for a reviewer to review a book aromas. On one occasion a player faked an in­ that has already established itself as a classic in jury. Dobbie, who was also the trainer, rushed its field. Even at the time of its original publica­ out, opened his first-aid bag, and a chicken tion in 1950, The Old Northwest was hailed by leaped out and raced across the field. the American HistoricalRevieiv as a "minor mas­ Lundeen also describes the ultimate social terpiece." The historian James G. Randall event, the "Miner Explosion," and the con­ wrote in the New York Times Book Review that struction of the largest "M" in the United "the rise of the American West in the quarter States by Miner students. He delineates the ri­ century before 1840 has often been told, but valry with the Normal School and, ultimately, the treatment by Mr. Buley is so different—by the merger of the two institutions. reason of its uncommon fullness, competence, 146 BOOK REVIEWS wealth of source material, and authentic central to the book's staying power: its re­ ffavor—that it may be considered unique." In search base. This book is, quite simply, a price­ the thirty years after 1950, The Old Northwest less compendium of painstaking research. lived up to its early press notices and took its The raw numbers themselves are impressive: place as the standard history of "The Terri­ 3,865 footnotes; 1,258 tightly written pages of tory of the United States Northwest of the text; dozens of detailed maps and illustrations. River Ohio." Now, this Pulitzer Prize winner Professor Buley spent twenty-five years cm this has been re-issued in a new two-volume set by work, and it appears that he was busy every Indiana University Press in association with minute. The sources range from every sort of the Indiana Historical Society. official U.S., state, and territorial documents, What is it that gives a book like this its stay­ to long-forgotten newspapers, to published ing power in a field where scholarship has and unpublished letters, diaries, and reminis­ changed dramatically since 1950? What are cences. Perhaps most impressive is Buley's ex­ the qualities of this book that make it worthy of haustive reading of contemporary newspa­ re-publication, while most histories written in pers and periodicals. 1950 now seem like antique historical docu­ From this base, Buley builds for the reader ments themselves? In short, why is this a clas­ an account that is both sweeping in scope, yet sic? I'm sure the possible explanations are richly detailed. The breadth of the book is ob­ many, but I would like to discuss in this review vious from the table of contents, with chapters the three that I think are most important: its on transportation and trade, money and bank­ style; its research base; and its lucky congru­ ing, politics and government, medicine, ence with current historical interest in the life schools, religion, literature, daily life, and and culture of common people. more. But the details are what make the I suppose it is almost tautological to say that Northwest Territory come alive. From the le­ a classic is well written. But the style of The Old gal complexities of federal land policy to the Northwest is fascinating not so much for its lit­ composition of the topsoil; from the story of erary ffair as for its faithfulness to the ffavor regional grain markets to instructions on how and style of the pioneer era. Buley writes in a to cradle wheat; from the founding of new very simple, non-literary, journalistic style. states to the discussion of who called whom a But it soon becomes clear to the reader that pimp after the 1824 election; from grand the­ this is the styleless style of good reporting— ories of education to the story of how the pres­ the kind of writing that blends so well with the ident of Indiana College pushed his professor sources themselves that the book reads at of mathematics into the mud—it's all here, times more like the account of a curious, in­ page after page, chapter after chapter, in copi­ formed traveler than the work of a historian ous and fascinating detail. The very first 150 years removed from the events he de­ phrase of the book—"It was spring at scribes. This was a conscious effort, at least to Pittsburgh"—has attached to it a footnote that some extent, for Buley writes in his preface explains the history of the spelling of "Pitts­ that he often included expressions and collo­ burgh." Right from the start, the reader is quialisms in his text to help recover the sense made to know that this is a special kind of of time and place. The result is not only a read­ book. able book, but a timeless one. Except for a few The third characteristic oi The Old Northwest historiographical footnotes, Buley never lets that has, I think, helped to make it a classic is his perspective drift from his closeness to the the congruence of its subject with current his­ subject. The very style of the book, therefore, toriographical interest. Like the practitioners seems to disconnect it from 1950. Of course, of the "new social history" of today, Buley is this is not always true; some suggestions of a mainly interested in portraying the everyday I950's view of politics, women, and Indians life of everyday people. Of course, he doesn't sometimes sneak into the story. But, overall, employ the quantitative research methods of Buley's attempt to survey his subject directly the new social history; his sources are diaries, and f'rom very close range saves The Old North­ travel memoirs, newspapers, and census sum­ west from creeping anachronism, and helps to maries, rather than wills, church registers, dis­ make it a book that is as permanently fresh aggregated census returns, and the like. But to and useful as the travel memoirs of Frollope, a large extent, his aim is consistent with what Marryat, or Martineau. many of us today think is important: How did The style of The Old Northwest is connected these people live? In fact, I think that this book to another quality that is perhaps even more is probably more congruent with the richly de- 147 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HLSTORY WINTER, 1984-198: tailed social history of the 1980's than it would gration," is largely the work of his daughter, a have been with the more baldly quantitative professor of Scandanavian at the University of efforts of the late 1960's and early 1970's. In Illinois, Urbana. Four more books in the series other words, the fiook is perhaps even more are planned. timely todav than it would have been had it The Danish songs in this book have much in been re-released ten years ago. common with the Swedish and Irish songs of This last characteristic stands out even the two previous collections. I hey are about more vividly when the pioneer-life chapters the hunger and poverty of mid-nineteenth- are contrasted with those chapters that are not century Denmark; painful farewells; difficult designed to be social history "from the bottom journeys and uncertainty. But they are in­ up"—especiallv the chapters on politics and fused with national pride and the dream of economics. These chapters are rather conven­ opportunity in a new land. tional institutional histories, devoted to legis­ lative debates and party politics and to the sto­ Oh, land with plains that have no end. ries of canals, railroads, banks, and state Where silent, star-filled nights finances. These chapters seem much more Caused thoughts to wander back in time dated than the social historv- chapters. Our un­ To earth's first childhood days. derstanding of Jacksonian political culture has Adam Dan, Danish immigrant to Racine, Wis­ been changed radically since 1950 by the "new consin, in 1871, wrote of the contrasting land­ political history," pioneered by such scholars scapes of the Old World and the New. Four of as Lee Benson and Edward Pessen. Similarly, his songs are included in this book. Fhey are the work of Douglass North, Jeffrey William­ anomalies. Most of the songs were written by son, and other "new economic historians" has non-emigrants, for profit and/or propaganda. transformed our \iew of the nature of the an­ A single Copenhagen publisher, Julius tebellum midwestern economy. It is in these Strandberg, wrote almost half of the songs in two areas—and, it might be added, in the areas this volume. When two Danish ships, the "Ge- of education history, women's history, and jser," and the "Fhingvalla," collided off New­ American Indian history—that The Old North­ foundland in August, 1888, with the loss of west has been superseded most clearly by later more than 100 lives, Strandberg wrote and historiography. printed two songs and sold more than 2,000 But, of course, it is a bit anachronistic, if not penny broadside sheets about the disaster on ridiculous, to seem to criticize a 1950 scholar the same day that word first reached Copen­ for not having read Lee Benson and Douglass hagen. Eight days later, with Copenhagen still North. My point, however, is merely that the hungry for news of the sinking of the "Gejser," weaknesses of the book only serve to highlight he wrote a third song with the heading, "My its strengths. Fhe fact that we have learned so Sweetheart's Death Aboard the 'Gejser:' Pub­ much in the past thirty-three years cmly serves lished by a Danish Girl Who Expected Her to emphasize how extraordinary it is that a Sweetheart To Return Home, Where They book from 1950 still has so much to teach us. Would Have Been Married In September." On topic after topic, The Old Northwest is as rich Such ballads, usually written to be sung to and fresh as it was thirty-three years ago. It is, familiar folk tunes, were the popular songs of in a word, a classic. the day, but they fulfilled the function of to­ day's newspapers, tabloids, and soap operas as DAVID PAUL NORD well. The Wrights' careful notes indicate those Indiana University songs which persist in the oral tradition, were sung and enjoyed after the printed sheets dis­ appeared. Of these, the greatest number are songs of farewell. They were taken up by the Danish Emigrant Ballads and Songs. By Ro- folk because they spoke to the very real feel­ CHELEE WRIGHT AND ROBERT L. WRIGHT, ings of homesickness and uncertainty of fami­ (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbon- lies and communities. Fhere is a poignant dale, 1983. ISBN 0-8093-1064-3. Pp. xi, 301. sameness to most of these songs, with one de­ Musical transcriptions, notes, bibliography, lightful exception. W'hile most mention beech indices. $30.00.) groves and green fields, "Home to Denmark" dwells lovingly on specific streets, parks, and This third volume of Robert L. WTight's se­ pubs in Copenhagen. It was an especially pop­ ries, "Ballads and Songs of the Westward Mi- ular song! 148 BOOK REVIEWS

This volume contains 116 texts and 64 been slightly intoxicated by the ideas of their tunes to which they were sung. (Many of the eminent predecessor) that I was a worthy can­ tunes served for several texts.) Of special in­ didate for graduate degrees. terest are several songs which grew out of the Ronald H. Carpenter shows how Furner missionary activities in Denmark of the Mor­ persuaded us. Flow he used words and mon Church; a series of songs pillorying two phrases, broad generalizations and specific labor idealists who fled to America, their plan details to make his points convincingly in ora­ for a socialist colony in Kansas a shambles; two tions and publications. In his introductory es­ songs about Danes who settled in Australia say the author, a professor of communication and New Zealand; and a lovely satirical song arts, dissects and analyzes in chronological or­ about easy riches in America, the text writ­ der the development of Furner's style. I o do ten by Hans Christian Andersen as part of an this he uses examples from speeches and es­ operetta. says beginning with Turner's prize-winning It is worth taking the time to study the orga­ oration delivered at his commencement exer­ nization of this book. Notes on the individual cises at Portage High School on June 28, 1878, songs appear in Rochelle Wright's compre­ and concluding with his famous essay, "Fhe hensive introduction; further notes on Significance of the Frontier in American His­ sources are printed beneath each text, and in a tory," delivered at the annual meeting of the section at the back of the book. The melodies American Historical Association in Chicago are printed separately from the text. Richard on July 12, 1893. P. Smiraglia's hand-printed musical transcrip­ Already in his commencement oration, tions are careful, clear and readable, and the "The Power of the Press," Furner relied upon volume is a good size for propping at the pi­ alliteration, parallel repetition of the same ano. word or phrase to begin successive clauses or Finally, Rochelle Wright has struck a happy sentences; used antithesis, "placing opposing balance between verse and prose translations. or contrasting meanings close together." Even the reader who knows no Danish can see While a student at the University of Wisconsin that the translations follow the Danish care­ his interest in oration continued, earned him fully, but the English is graceful, without the high grades in "Rhetoricals" and special praise forced rhymes or awkward syntax that can for his rendition of Marc Anthony's "Address result from either verse or literal translations. to the Romans." As an upperclassman he went to hear visiting lecturers. Carpenter discusses JUDITH R. WOODWARD at some length the possibly strong influence of Wisconsin Public Radio an extremely prominent and popular plat­ form speaker, Robert Ingersoll, on 'Furner's style. A much stronger impression was made by Robert M. La Follette who was a senior The Eloquence of Frederick Jackson Turner. By when Turner was a freshman. La Follette won RONALD H. CARPENTER. (The Huntington Li­ three successive contests in competitions at the brary, San Marino, California, 1983. ISBN 0- university, at the state-level, and at an inter­ 87328-078-4. Pp. xiii, 230. Notes, appendix, state meet for his oration, "lago." Consider­ index. $20.00.) ation is also given by the author to the in­ ffuence of the required text. Principles of Three decades ago, during my first semes­ Rhetoric, as well as the influence resulting from ter in graduate school at the University of Wis­ quite different experiences; winning the top consin, the eloquence of Frederick Jackson prizes for oratory in both his junior and senior Turner persuaded me to study the influence years at the university. of the frontier experience on the development Not only were his skills at oratory recog­ of the American character. In succeeding se­ nized but Professor William F. Allen asked mesters I discovered that in every American Turner to join a small group to pursue re­ history lecture course and seminar that I en­ search on local history topics. I he results of rolled in Turner's thesis helped me earn re­ Turner's research were published in his fa­ spectable grades in midterm examinations ther's newspapers. Subsequently, after attend­ and on research papers. Thus Furner helped ing the i888 American Historical Association me persuade my professors (Howard K. Convention, I'urner linked his interest in his­ Beale, Vernon Carstensen, Merle Curti, Mer­ tory and his skill at rhetoric in his comments rill Jensen, and Paul F. Sharp, all of whom had on the papers he had heard. He believed more 149 WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, I984-I985 effective use of characterization was needed to dix is reprinted La lollette's "lago." Fhus in get the listener or reader to identify with the Turner's own words the reader can trace the subject. He agreed with Theodore Roosevelt's development of his eloquent style. A major use of characterization in The Winning of the contribution of the book then is to familiarize West. Historical writing needed vivacity. the historian with the methodology of the stu­ There follows a lengthy analysis of a speech dents of communication arts in explaining that Turner gave to the Madison Literary how style and ideas progressed to produce a Club in February, 1891, which was based on a successful orator who became a famous histo­ paper entitled "American Colonization," of rian. how this greatly influenced the development RUSSELL S. NELSON of the frontier thesis that began to be recog­ The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point nized in an article, "Problems in American History," and how this article got Turner an invitation to read a paper at the American His­ torical Association annual meeting in Chicago Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks: Corn as a Way in July, 1893. The paper presented was "The of Life in Pioneer America. By NICHOLAS P. HAR­ Significance of the Frontier in American His­ DEMAN. (Louisiana State University Press, Ba­ tory," published the next year by both the ton Rouge and London, 1981. Pp. xii, 271. State liistorical Society of Wisconsin and by Illustrations, bibliographv, index. ISBN 0- the American Historical Association. Furner 807I-0793-X, $20.00.) distributed reprints widely. With the frontier thesis made public Car­ Nicholas P. Hardeman comes perilously penter proceeds to discuss the influence on close to substituting "corn" for "frontier" in historians. Here there is less interest in the his­ Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis. toriography of the thesis than in explaining The corn culture, he argues, goes far toward how the frontier thesis became a part of the explaining American uniqueness. The abun­ public mind. How the thesis spelled out in the dant yield, ease of cultivation even in half- paragraph beginning with the sentence: "To cleared fields, and multitudinous uses as food, the frontier the American intellect owes its fodder, fuel, caulking, and toilet paper made striking characteristics" became a myth with the ubiquitous maize indispensible for Ameri­ ever-widening appeal. How expressions of can farmers North and South. Nowhere in the this appeal persist in fiction, paintings, music, U'nited States was corn not a mainstay of rodeos, motion pictures, and personal adorn­ American agriculture, regardless of the farm's ment: the cowboy hat and boots. size or major crops. If maize gave the small Carpenter's introductory essay is based on a frontier farmer independence and flexibility, search through the rich collection of Furner it likewise supplied his plantation neighbor materials at the Huntington Library, on wide food for cattle and slaves which allowed com­ reading in the historiography of the Furner plete concentration on growing the great sta­ thesis, and on clear thinking that illustrates ple crops. well the intention of the young man from Por­ The corn culture, Hardeman maintains, tage, Wisconsin, to persuade Americans to also shaped early American patterns of recre­ study the influence of the frontier on their his­ ation. I he husking bee became the symbol of tory. Only the second sentence in the ninety- rural America's communal neighborliness, two page exposition confounds me. I quote combining work with fun. No single object the first two sentences. "Frederick Jackson lended itself so well to games and toys as did Turner was an eloquent man. And he himself the corncob. Likewise used as corks, insula­ identified a precise, pivotal factor which led to tion, back scratchers, fishing flats, and dolls, the persuasive style in his frontier thesis dis­ corncobs were universally employed as harm­ course having a profound rhetorical impact less projectiles in countless corncob fights, a upon our national psychology." "significant phenomenon in the social struc­ Following the introduction and notes ancl ture of pioneer America." Fhe social utility comprising the balance of the book are re­ and medicinal properties of corn whiskey are printed Turner's prize-winning orations, eu­ also duly noted by Hardeman. logies and occasional addresses, and the two Much detailed attention is given to the important academic addresses: "American methods of growing corn in each stage of its Colonization" and "Fhe Significance of the development from planting to harvesting. Frontier in American History." In an appen- The main point here again is the universality 150 BOOK REVIEWS

of these techniques in rural America. I he his­ For nearly fifty years, the Fravel and De­ tory of farm implements follows closely prob­ scription series of the Norwegian-American lems of planting, weeding, fertilizing, and Historical Association has provided scholars harvesting corn. Through all such changes in and general readers with a rich collection of technology, however, the faithful hoe re­ documents, travel accounts, letters, and immi­ mained the single common denominator, "in­ grant guidebooks relevant to the Norwegian dispensible to corn culture, as necessary as immigrant experience in the United States. On corn was to human existence." Both Sides of the Ocean, volume ten in the series, Much of this book, particularly chapters on is a memoir written in the I890's by Per Ha­ storing, shelling, and grinding, uses of corn as gen, an early Norwegian immigrant to eastern food and beverages, and "corn on the hoof" in Wisconsin. Born to poor crofters living near hogs, cattle, and poultry, seem a relentless cat­ Tvedestrand, Norway, in 1821, Per Hagen left aloging of obvious attributes to an American for America in 1846 after deciding that any se­ reader. Perhaps Hardeman's ultimate objec­ ries of farming and sailoringjobs would never tive, however, is to demonstrate corn's preem­ provide the funds he needed to purchase a inence by enumerating through sheer farm and marry a local farmer's daughter. repetition its importance in our diets and life­ Written in the third person but historically au­ style. Regardless of the tediousness of such thentic, the memoir traces his journey across protracted enumerations, there can be little the Atlantic, the long trip to Wisconsin, incon­ doubt that he is absolutely correct in maintain­ sistent attempts at farming, the struggle to es­ ing the virtual indispensability of maize to tablish an Evangelical Lutheran Church in the American agriculture. community, business success as a storekeeper, Evocation of a nostalgic rural past through and Per Hagen's return to Norway in 1883 af­ "corn as a socioeconomic and cultural phe­ ter thirty-seven years in the United States. nomenon" by American authors from Joel This is a short but well-edited book which Barlow to John Greenleaf Whittier and Wil­ should interest a wide audience interested in liam Faulkner supports Hardeman's assertion Wisconsin history. about the importance of the corn culture in our literature. Even more pervasive were ex­ JAMES S. OLSON pressions and images of corn in popular Sam Houston State University literature—farmer's almanacs, encyclopedias, and rural lexicons. The author also does an excellent job illustrating the prevalence of words and idioms from the corn culture in modern American speech, such as "a hard Becoming American: An Ethnic History. By road to hoe," "corny," "shucks," "rougher THOMAS J. ARCHDEACON. (The Free Press, than a cob," and "grist for the mill." New York, 1983. ISBN 0-02-900830-1. Pp. In an otherwise estimable work, Hardeman xviii, 297. Fables, notes, essay on sources, in­ disappoints the reader by failing to note the dex. $17.95.) present importance of corn in modern scien­ tific research—genetic engineering and the Few Americans would deny that our cul­ effort to develop miracle strains capable of ture is in large part a reflection of this nation's supplying their own fertilizer. In this sense, diverse ethnic heritage. From the first native too, corn continues to occupy a central posi­ Americans to the most recent resident aliens, tion through science and technology in the immigrants have given meaning to the Latin American commonwealth. phrase on our coinage—"E Pluribus Unum." But going beyond this generalization to delin­ DURWOOD DUNN eate the specific contours of our ethnic past is Tennessee Wesleyan College not easy. The very different circumstances that surround the emigration and ethnicity of each distinct group make it difhcult to gener­ On Both Sides of the Ocean: A Part of Per Hagen's alize about the immigrant experience. One Journey. By PER HAGEN. Translated by KATE need only leaf through the recently published STAFFORD and HARALD NAESS. (The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups Norwegian-American Historical Association, to gain a sense of the diversity of our ethnic Northfield, Minnesota, 1984. Pp. viii, 70. In­ past. troduction, notes. $8.00.) In spite of the pitfalls, Thomas J. Archdea- 151 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, I984-I985 con of the University of Wisconsin-Madison levan University Press, Middletown, Connect­ set out to write a one-volume survey of the icut, f 983. ISBN 0-8195-5073-6. Pp. xxii, 294. American immigrant experience, a basic in­ Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $26.95.) terpretation of the subject for the educated public in general and for college students in particular. In Becoming American: An Ethnic The "sacred sands" are in reality the Indi­ Histoiy, Archdeacon does an admirable job of ana Dunes located on the southern shore of discussing our ethnic heritage without over- Lake Michigan. Tucked between Gary and generalizing. In fact, the author deliberately Michigan City, Indiana, was a sandy natural limits his generalizations and relies on com­ phenomena of unparalled variety. 1 he beau­ parisons between groups to put events in per­ tiful shifting sand hill natural landscape is spective. complemented by tamarack swamps, oak for­ ests, spring lupine, and prickly pear cactus. It There is much to be said in favor of the is also the migratory home for numerous wa­ book. Archdeacon's extensive use of census terfowl. Not far from Chicago, the dunes be­ data, especially his charts and tables, is innova­ came a resort and recreation area for urban- tive. Even the knowledgeable scholar of eth­ ites. nicity will find these materials of value. Arch­ deacon is also to be applauded for taking a Ronald Engel, an avid admirer and former broad perspective of his topic, one that in­ resident of the Dunes, has written a concise cludes an extensive discussion of the emigra­ and informative narrative of the Dunes' his­ tion of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, and tory. In part because of its proximity to the blacks to this country. For too long, historians Chicago area, a number of University of Chi­ of emigration have focused exclusively on cago scientists began studying the evolving white ethnic groups from Europe. One chap­ ecology of the Dunes. Engel calls this the ter, "From Immigrant to Ethnic," is particu­ "birthplace of ecology" in America as the larly valuable because it carries the story of Dunes became a classic study site. ethnicity foriward from the Immigration Re­ However, private industry's repeated tres­ striction Act of 1924 to the present. In these pass and demands for water and sand threat­ regards Archdeacon has made a significant ened the fragile, much-studied eco-system of contribution to the literature. the south shore. As advocates of public wel­ fare clashed with the proponents of consump­ Yet the book is not without faults. Archdea­ tion and development, one of the longest and con's reluctance to generalize makes the book most bitter environmental contests ensued. It something of a patchwork of individual sto­ involved early advocates of preservation such ries. His extensive use of statistics gives the as Carl Sandburg and Jane Addams. Later, Il­ book a dispassionate tone, one that fails to con­ linois Senator Paul Douglas joined the battle, vey a sense of the ordeal of emigration or the but much more important were the thousands social and spiritual costs of assimilation. Com­ of common people who simply wanted to save paring Becoming American with Oscar the Dunes. Handlin's flawed but moving The Uprooted un­ derscores this point. In sum, the book is not so Indeed, as the sandmining companies much of an ethnic history as it is a demo­ scooped away the sand and Bethlehem Steel graphic history, a fact that may dissuade some made permanent inroads onto the shore, the teachers from adopting the book for class­ people rallied to restrain the onslaught. Engel room use. carefully and accurately describes the move­ ment that led to the establishment of the Indi­ Well written ancl thoughtful, this book be­ ana Dunes National Lakeshore and the Indi­ longs on the shehes of college and university ana Dunes State Park. In the late 1970's libraries and large public libraries. Individuals another major effort was undertaken to halt interested in ethnicity also will find this book the construction of a nuclear plant. to be a valuable addition to their personal col­ lections. Fhe author is an activist whose bias is obvi­ ous throughout the book. He does analyze why corporations did what they felt had to be TIMOTHY WALCH done. That does not detract from the signifi­ National Archives and Records Service cance of the volume one iota. He attempts to capture the spirit of the community action and Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the how that can unify in a positive sense. Fhere Indiana Dunes. By J. RONALD ENGEE. (Wes- are insensitive "bad guys" and only a devoted 152 BOOK REVIEWS and active citizenry can deter their consuming now apparently largely destroyed, was its use passions. Although many battles are lost and as an unusual biological laboratory. Henry others are only half-won, the people contin­ Chandler Cowles, through observation in the ued to act. This concept of community action Dunes around the turn of the century, estab­ and what can be accomplished for the public lished the principles of plant succession and good is the volume's significant contribution. climax. It is another reminder of how recently Ronald Engel has left a lasting record of how much of our now commonplace information the natural beauty of the land can be pro­ was gleaned and organized. tected. Those who enjoy visiting local museums to look at the artifacts and savor the details and F. Ross PETERSON taste of life in an earlier day will like this book. Utah State University Those who enjoy stories of fighting-for-the- right will like the book, too, but they should not expect the white hats to win. Those look­ ing for up-to-date case material for policy, po­ Duel for the Dunes: Land Use and Conflict on the litical science/public administration, or natu­ Shores of Lake Michigan. BY KAY FRANKLIN and ral resource-related courses should like this NORMA SCHAEFFER. (University of Illinois book, also. Press, Urbana, 1983. ISBN 0-252-01034-5. Pp. xvii, 278. Maps, photographs, notes, bib­ The political analysis contained from about liographic essay, index. $18.95.) page 242 to page 257 is the high point of the book. It explains the forces and alignments which led to the present unsatisfactory state of The dirge for the destruction of irreplace­ affairs. The reader can only look at it and smell able natural phenomena in this country—and it since the events have taken place at a dis­ in the world—is the background music for this tance. It may not be correct, but it has an aura book. The irony is that the steel industry that of high credibility. The editor must have been cost America the best parts of the Indiana sorely tempted to begin the book with this por­ Dunes is shriveling and changing. As of the tion to provide the clear framework for the de­ WTiling of the book, the steel-making facilities tailed historical reporting. The threads of the at Burns Harbor—the plants and port so des­ history are neatly woven together at this point. perately longed for by the economic and polit­ The preferences of the authors are clear: a ical notables of Porter County, Indiana—were Dunes park of 12,000 acres as envisioned by on a severe downward swing. professionals in 1916 should have been estab­ This volume traces the economic and politi­ lished. The scientific, cultural, and recrea­ cal history of the sand dunes, attendant bogs, tional values that would have been preserved etc., that made up almost all of the lake shore are now measured by their absence. The eco­ of what is now Indiana when first that shore nomics relied on by the port and steel mill pro­ was seen by a white man. In style, it resembles moters have been undermined by the broad, a movie with frequent cuts away from the structural changes in the economy about main story line—flashbacks, explanatory vi­ which we have heard so much during the cur­ gnettes, and biographies of important figures. rent recession. To focus attention on people or specific Fhe book is well edited. It has an excellent events, a total of twenty-five italicized interjec­ preface. John Brademas, former congress­ tions is used, some running two pages or more man, now president of New York University, in length. The attempt is to bring life to impor­ summarizes the book with fine style and econ­ tant characters in the tale and high points in omy. Nevertheless, w'hile this book is good, it the flow of politics and economics that has led sings a sad song. to a multiple-site park still under ecological and political attack at the time of writing. EDWARD V. SCHTEN Eighteen of those are about people (sixteen University of Wisconsin—Extension people because former congressman Charles Halleck and former senator Paul Douglas each are subjects of two). Fhe remaining seven concern events such as Julie Nixon Eisenho­ wer's campaign visit to the area in September, 1972. Ohiyesa: Charles Eastman, Santee Sioux. By RAY­ One of the original values of the Dunes, MOND WILSON. (University of Illinois Press, 153 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

Urbana, 1983. ISBN 0-252-00978-9. Pp. xiii, helped found the Boy Scouts of America. His 219. Preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, greatest accomplishments, however, were in notes, bibliography, index. $16.95.) the area of writing and speech making in or­ der to promote the American Indian. The life of Ohiyesa as presented by Ray­ While Eastman accomplished a great deal mond Wilson is one of proud achievements by during his lifetime, he also became embroiled the Santee Sioux but also a sad chronicle of lost in meaningless verbal battles with white In­ opportunities and tragic failures by the man dian agents. He experienced several occasions also known as Charles Eastman. Ohiyesa was where he found himself in financial difficulties four years old at the time of the Minnesota and sadly found civilization so distasteful in Sioux uprising in 1862. He and most of his his later years that he returned to live in the people escaped to Canada where he spent his wilderness. He actually spent very few years as next ten years undergoing the rigorous train­ a medical doctor working among his people ing that most Sioux boys experienced to pre­ and while his training was not wasted, he pare for a life of hunting and warring. At the should have developed this dimension of his age of sixteen Ohiyesa's father, a Presbyterian life to meet the very real needs of his people. minister, convinced his son to join him after a Even in his personal life Eastman experienced ten year separation. failure. He had married a white woman, Eastman embraced the white man's world Elaine Goodale, in 1891 and for years they with the same enthusiasm that he had demon­ were very supportive of each other and their strated in learning the Sioux way of life. He projects to help American Indians, but their adopted Christianity and learned to read and relationship soured in later years. write in English. He proved to be an extremely In this first study of Charles A. Eastman the bright student and furthered his studies at author has produced a compelling biography. Dartmouth College and the Boston University He has done a remarkable job in ferreting out School of Medicine. worthwhile evidence from archival deposito­ Upon graduation Eastman took a position ries. When there were gaps in the story he sup­ as government physician at Pine Ridge plemented his work with interviews and sec­ Agency in South Dakota just in time to treat ondary sources. In a style that is precise and the Indian casualties at the Wounded Knee interesting Wilson has presented a balanced Battle in 1890. In subsequent jobs he served as story of a man who accomplished accultura­ Indian Secretary for the YMCA, he repre­ tion but not assimilation in the white man's sented his people in the Santee Sioux claims world. case against the U.S. government, was govern­ ment physician at Crow Creek, Indian inspec­ JOHN W. BAILEY tor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Carthage College

Book Reviews

Archdeacon, Becoming Amencan: An Ethnic Histoiy, reviewed of Life in Pioneer America, reviewed by Durwood by Timothy Walch 1 ."> 1 Dunn ' 150 Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period. 1815-1840, re­ Kahn, Kahn on Codes: Secrets of Ihe New Cryptology, reviewed viewed by David Paul Nord 146 by Mary Lou M. Schultz V 137 Carpenter, The Eloquence of Frederick Jackson Turner, re­ Klueter, A Family Concern: Marathon Savings and Loan Associ­ viewed by Russell S. Nelson 149 ation, reviewed by Richard C, Haney 142 Current, Speaking ofAbraluim Lincoln: The Man and His Mean­ hundeen. Jubilee! A History of the College of Engineering, The ing for Our Times, reviewed byjohn L. Thomas ... ,14,5 University of Wisconsin-Platteville, 1908-1983, reviewed Engel, Sacred Sands: The Struggle for (Community in the Indi­ by Glen Jeansonne 146 ana Dunes, reviewed by F, Ross Peterson 1,52 Meehan, Frank Lloyd Wnght: A Research Guide to Archival Franklin and Schaeffer, Duel for the Dunes: Land Use and CUm- Sources, reviewed by Paul E. Sprague 140 flict on the Shores of Lake Michigan, reviewed by Edward V, Weimann, The Fair Women: The Story of the Woman's Building, Schten 153 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, reviewed by Gurda, The Quiet Company: A Modem Histoiy of Northwestern Rima D, Apple 144 Mutual Life, reviewed by Frederick I, Olson 143 Wilson, Ohiyesa: Charles Eastman, Santee Sioux, reviewed by Hagen, On Both Sides of the Ocean: A Part of Per Hagen's Jour­ John W, Bailey 1:53 ney, reviewed by James S, Olson 151 Wright and Wright, Danish Emigrant Balkuis and Songs, re­ Hardeman, Shucks, Shocks, and Hominy Blocks: ('Aim as a Way viewed by Judith R, Woodward 148 154 Wisconsin History Pp. 76. Illus. $2.00. Available from Pat Poupore, Little Chute Middle School, 329 Checklist South Grand Avenue, Little Chute, Wis­ consin 54140.) Oral history interviews con­ ducted by fourth-grade students from Lit­ Recently published and currently available Wisconsiana tle Chute Middle School. added to the Society's Library are listed below. The compilers, Gerald R, Eggleston, Acquisitions Librarian, and Susan Dorst, Order Librarian, are interested in The Condon Clan: Descendants of Thomas Condmi, obtaining information about (or copies of) items that are Ontario and his Son Nathaniel Bloodsworth not widely advertised, such as publications of local historical societies, family histories and genealogies, Condon, Wisconsin and Allied Lines, edited by privately printed works, and histories of churches, Mary Poast and Dr. Arnold Condon. institutions, or organizations. Authors and publishers (Brodhead, Wisconsin, Condon Family of wishing to reach a wider audience and also to perform a Brodhead, Wisconsin, 1983. Pp. viii, 466. \'aluable bibliographic service are urged to inform the Illus. No price listed. Available from Dr. compilers of their publications, including the following information: author, title, location and name of publisher, Arnold Condon, P.O. Box 66, Brodhead, date of publication, price, pagination, and address of Wisconsin 53520.) supplier. Write Susan Dorst, .Acquisitions Section. Early Hurley, the 1880s, edited by Craig Allen Benishek, Thelma. Lenaville—Now Branch: Lewis. (Hudson, Wisconsin, 1984. Hurley Preserving Yesteryears for Tomorrow. (Manito­ Centennial Series Book #f. Pp. 36. Illus, woc, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. 59. Illus. $3.00 $3.75 plus $1.00 postage and handling. plus $.85 postage and handling. Wisconsin Available from Iron County Historical So­ residents add $.15 sales tax. Available from ciety, P.O. Box 4, Hurley, Wisconsin Manitowoc County Historical Society, P.O. 54534.) Box 574, Manitowoc, Wisconsin 54220.) Engel, Dave. River City Memoirs, Vol. 2 (Wis­ Brown, Mayme A. I'm Glad I Was Born Yester­ consin Rapids, Wisconsin, South Wood day: A Chronicle of an Era of Life. (Boscobel?, County Historical Corp., c 1984. Pp. 118. Il­ Wisconsin, 1984? Pp. [31]. Illus. $2.00 plus lus. $13.95 plus $1.00 postage and han­ $1.00 postage and handling. Available dling. Wisconsin residents add 5% sales tax. from Mrs. Vilas Bohlman, 1200 Mound St., Available from River City Memoirs, 540 Boscobel, Wisconsin 53805.) Memoirs of a Third Street South, Wisconsin Rapids, Wis­ Boscobel resident who spent twelve years as consin 54494.) A compilation of columns an actress with various touring companies that appeared in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily during the early part of the century. Tribune about the area.

Buchen, Gustave William. Historic Sheboygan Farewell to the Homeland: European Immigralioa County. (Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 1984? Pp. to N.E. Wisconsin, 1840 to 1900, edited by ix, 370. Illus. $ 10.95 plus $ 1.50 postage and Sylvia Hall Holubetz. (Green Bay, W'iscon­ handling. Available from Sheboygan sin, 1984. Pp. ca. 150. Illus. No price listed. County Historical Society, 3110 Erie Ave­ Available from Brown County Historical nue, Sheboygan, Wisconsin 53081.) Re­ Society, 1120 S. Van Buren, Green Bay, print of the 1976 edition of a book origi­ Wisconsin 54301.) nally published in 1944. Fosdal, Roberta Lien. Nonvegian Roots, Ameri­ Churchill, Josie. Among the Hills. (Westby?, can Branches: the Kjeltl and Bergil Lien Family Wisconsin, 1984? Pp'xiii, 181. Illus. $9.00. History. (Jefferson?, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. Available from author, R.R. 3, Box 149, 253, [8]. Illus. No price listed. Available Westby, Wisconsin 54667.) Reminiscences from author, 310 South Wilson Avenue, Je­ about people and places in the upper re­ fferson, W'isconsin 53549.) gion of the Kickapoo River. Harris, James W'.; Olson, Lois M.; and Olson, Chute Rules. (Little Chute, Wisconsin, 1984. Hubert A. The Descendents of Joel Day and Re- loo WTSCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY WINTER, 1984-1985

becca DeWitt from Huron County, Ohio. Grove, Wisconsin cl984. Pp. vi, 99. Illus. (Waupaca?, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. J02, [7], No price listed. Available from Dorothy Illus. $1 I.OO. Available from Hue and Lois Rogers Noble, 1329 West Street, Union Olson, 1121 Tenth Street, Waupaca, Wis­ Grove, Wisconsin 53182.) Autobiography consin 54981.) of the author's childhood spent in western Racine Countv during the 1920"s and The History of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Hud­ 1930-s. son, Wisconsin. (Hudson, Wisconsin, 1984, Pp. X, 49. Illus, $10.00 Available from Star- Nourse, Robert. History of the Nourse Family, Observer Publishing Companv-, P.O. Box Volume II. (Milwaukee?, Wisconsin, 1984? 147, Hudson, Wisconsin 54016.) 155 leaves. Illus. No price listed. Available from author, 1129 North Jackson, #1402, Jackson, Ronald Vern; Samuelsen, W. David: Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202.) and Rosenkilde, Scott D. Wisconsin 1830 Census Index. (Boundful, Utah, cl984. 1 T/ie lOOlh Anniversary of St. John's Lutheran vol., various pagings. $16.00. Available Church, Pulcifer, Wisconsin, 1884-1984. from Accelerated Indexing Systems, 70 (Pulcifer, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. 60. Illus. No East South 1 eniple. Bank of Utah Build­ price listed. Available from St. John's Lu­ ing, Mezzanine Floor, Salt Lake City, Utah theran C^hurch, Pulcifer, W'isconsin 54164.) 84111.) Pasowicz, Joseph, Jr., and Pasowicz, Joan. Jackson, Ronald Vern; Samuelsen, W. David; Florence County, Wisconsin, Births, 1882- and Rosenkilde, Scott D. Wucomin 1838 1900, Volume 1. (Fence, Wisconsin, cl984. Census Index. (Bountiful, Utah, cl984. 1 Pp. ii, 159. $12.50.) vol., various pagings. $30.00. Available from Accelerated Indexing Systems, 70 Pasowicz, Joseph, Jr., and Pasowicz, Joan. East South Temple, Bank of Utah Build­ Florence County, Wisconsin, Deaths, 1882- ing, Mezzanine Floor, Salt Lake City, Utah 1900, Volume 1. (Fence, Wisconsin, cl984. 84111.) Pp. m, 53. $5.00.)

Jackson, Ronald Vern; Samuelsen, W. Da\id; Pasowicz, Joseph, Jr., and Pasowicz, Joan. and Rosenkilde, Scott D. Wisconsin 1842 Florence County, Wisconsin, Marriages, 1882- Census Index. (Bountiful, Utah, cl984. 1 1900, Volume I. (Fence, Wisconsin, cl984. vol., various pagings. $30.00. Available Pp. ii, 196. $16.00.) The above three publi­ from Accelerated Indexing Systems, 70 cations are available from Cienealogical East South Feniple, Bank of Utah Build­ Data Services, P.O. Box 9, Fence, Wisconsin ing, Mezzanine Floor, Salt Lake CTIV, Utah 54120. 84111.) Potpourri: a 1983 Anthology, edited b)' Fern B. Koenig, Gilbert H. Once Upmi a Prairie: Reflec­ Griffin. (Shell Lake, "Wisconsin, 1983. Pp. tions of Waukesha's Yesterdays. (Waukesha, 72. Illus. No price listed. Available from Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. 202.' Illus. $14.00. Fern B. Griflan, Star Route #26, Shell Lake, Available from Waukesha Freeman, 200 Wisconsin 54871.) .A. collection of memoirs, Park Place, Waukesha, Wisconsin 53186.) essays, poems, and fiction bv the In- dianhead Writers Club of Washburn Murphv, Donald G. A Genealogy of Thomas County and adjacent areas. Lumsden and Elizabeth Wilson. (Maple Grove, Minnesota, 1982. 1 vol., various pagings. Il­ Sanderson, Herbert J. Pictorial Marine History, lus. No price listed. Available from author, Told in Words and Pictures. (Milwaukee, Wis­ 7410 Berkshire Way, Maple Grove, Minne­ consin, cI984. Pp. 63. Illus. $5.00. Availa­ sota 55369.) ble from Wisconsin Marine Historical Soci­ ety, Local History & Marine Room, 814 Noble, Richard G. Country Odyssey. (Union West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, Wis- 156 WISCONSIN HISTORY C;HECKLIST

consin 53233.) Reprint of the edition that Years, Volume VII. (Spooner, Wisconsin, was published in the 1940's, the volume 1983. Pp. 48. Illus. $4.00.) Fhe above four gives an overview of ships and shipwrecks publications are available from the author, on the Great Lakes. 306 Balsam Street, Spooner, Wisconsin 54801.) Schneller, Alan. History of Tomah Schools, 1855—1978, Tomah, Wisconsin. (Tomah?, Thompson—Rue: a Nonvegian Immigrant Family Wisconsin, 1984? 65 leaves. Illus. $2.50 and its American-Born Descendants. (Decorah, plus $1.73 postage and handling. Availat)le Iowa, Anundsen Publishing Companv, from Business Leaders of America Club, 1984. Pp, xviii, 930. Illus. $45.'00. Available Attn: C. Franke, Advisor, Fomah Senior from Mrs. Kenneth Foss, 5225 Oak Park High School, Tomah, Wisconsin 54660.) Road, Route 1, Marshall, Wisconsin 53599.) Stamm-Baum der Familie, Christian and Susanna Schlag Schumann, Dane County, Wisconsin. Voices of the Valley: an Oral Histoiy. (Wonewoc?, (Blanchardville, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. 86. Wisconsin, 1984. 2 vols. Illus. $3.00 plus Illus. $10.00 plus $1.50 postage and han­ $.63 postage and handling. Available from dling. Available from Marie Kolberg, 4514 Historical Society of the Baraboo Valley, Pawnee Pass, Madison, Wisconsin 53711.) Mrs. Lillian V. Johnson, Pres., Rt. 1, P.O. Box 168A, Wonewoc, Wisconsin 53968.) Stevens, Thcimas N. "Dear Carrie . . .": the Civil Reminiscences by residents of the Upper War Letters of Thomas N. Stevens, edited by Baraboo Valley. George M. Blackburn. (Mount Pleasant, Michigan, 1984. Pp. xx, 341. $17.50. Avail­ able from Clarke Historical Library, Cen­ Wallman, Charles J. Edward ]. Brandt, Inven­ tral Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, tor: His Inventions and His Company, 1890— Michigan 48859.) Stevens was a member of 1983. (Watertown, Wisconsin, cr984. Pp. Company C of the Wisconsin 28th Volun­ 200. Illus. $7.95. Available from author, teer Regiment. The Regiment spent most 600 Civilian Street, Watertown, Wisconsin of the War on garrison duty in the trans- 53094.) History of the Brandt Company, a Mississippi West. Watertown manufacturer of banking equipment, and its founder. The Syverud Family in America—1868 to 1984. (Stockton?, California, 1984? Pp. 290. Illus. Willett, Martha Miller. Concord to Waukesha: the No price listed. Available from Martha Ancestry of Paul Holland Wheeler and Almira Fornell, 10602 North Alpine Road, Stock­ Wheeler Ross. (Brooklyn, New York, 1983. 1 ton, California 95212.) Members of the vol., various pagings. $10.00 plus $1.50 family settled in Wisccmsin. postage and handling. Available from Poly­ technic Institute of New York, 333 Jav Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201.) Tarr, Sharon. Spooner, Wisconsin: the Isl 100 Years, Volume IV. (Spooner, Wisconsin, 1981.Pp. 40. Illus. $4.00.) Wolf-Riedy, Mary Esther. Swiss Roots: Setter Genealogy and History, 1290-1980. (Fort Tarr, Sharon. Spooner, Wisconsin: the Isl 100 Atkinson?, Wisconsin, 1984? Pp. 299. Illus. Years, Volume V. (Spooner, Wisconsin, 1981. No price listed. Available from author, 419 Pp. 44. Illus. $4.00.) South Main, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin 53538.) Tarr, Sharon. Spooner, Wisconsin: the Isl 100 Years, Volume Via. (Spooner, Wisconsin, Wright, Jeanette Haniann. Die Thiede Familie. 1982. Pp. 24. Illus. $2.25.) Fhere is no vol­ (Menomonie, Wisconsin, 1984. Pp. 127. Il­ ume VI. lus. No price listed. Available from author, 773 River Heights Road, Menomonie, Wis­ Tarr, Sharon. Spooner, Wisconsin: the 1st 100 consin 54751.) 157 Accessions the growth of a network of progressive Chris­ tian activists; presented by the organization Services for microtilming, xeroxing, and photostating all via Kathleen Schultz, Detroit, Michigan. but certain restricted items in its manuscript collections Records, 1968—1981, oi Cultural Correspon­ are provided by the Society. For details v\ritc Harold L. Miller, dence, a leftist journal on popular culture es­ tablished by Paul Buhle in 1975; including correspondence with writers, artists, readers, and others, writings, interviews on humor and Manuscripts the Left, pamphlets and posters from others, cartoons, mailing lists, reviews, prospectuses, General Collections. Records, 1916—1934, of the and other records; presented by Paul Buhle, Anti-Saloon League of Wisconsin preserved by Providence, Rhode Island. League attorney James J. McDonald and per­ Papers, I86I-1937, of Charles Dadant taining to the League's efforts to implement (1817—1902), a Frenchman who immigrated and enforce prohibition; including detective to Illinois in 1863 and founded a bee supply reports, testimony, and other materials on in­ firm in 1874; consisting largely of correspon­ vestigations of illegal activities; files on local dence with information on beekeeping exper­ option elections; printed materials; speeches iments, controversies, and developments in and other papers of McDonald; and other re­ the United States and Europe, and comments cords; presented by James J. McDonald, Mad­ on political philosophy and world events; pre­ ison. sented by the Agricultural Library of the Uni­ Papers, 1924—1976, oi Isabel H. Baumann versity of Wisconsin-Madison. (1906 ), a rural woman activist, consisting Transcriptions and indexes of Bible and of scripts and other papers from the radio family records, marriage records, wills, tomb­ program, the "We Say What We Think Club"; stone inscriptions, and other records of genea­ newsletters from the Dane County Rural Fed­ logical interest; gathered by the Illinois Daugh- eration; minutes and correspondence of the ters of the American Revolution's Genealogical Pierceville Mothers' Club; and other items; Records Committee. presented by Mrs. Baumann, Sun Prairie. Papers, 1923-1982, of Eugene Dennis Addiuonal papers, 1928-1981, of Wiscon­ (1904-1961) and Peggfy^ Dennis (1909 ), ac­ sin Communist party leader Fred Bassett Blair; tivists in the Communist Party, USA; includ­ including writings, correspondence, family ing correspondence, notes, writings, and genealogical papers, John Blair letters on other papers on the couple's organizing activi­ fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Wisconsin ties, the internal strife and government re­ Communist party records, and hies on other pression of the party in the 1940's and 1950's, leftist groups and issues; presented by Mr. Eugene Dennis' work as party general secre­ Blair, Milwaukee. tary, 1946—1955, and Peggy Dennis'journalis­ Fhe Caroline Chamberlain Family Pajjers, tic work for the party and on political and fem­ 1749—1954, concerning ancestors in the Ad­ inist topics after she left the party in 1976; ams, Norton, Cranch, and Smith families in presented by Peggy Dennis, Berkeley, Califor­ Massachusetts, New York, and Georgia; con­ nia. sisting of correspondence, diaries, sermons, Additions to the papers, 1830-1911, of music, and other papers documenting partici­ Hercules Dousman I (1800—1868), Hercules pation in the War of 1812, an 1849 voyage to Dousman II (1848—1886), and Nina Sturgis California, the family connection to President Dousman (c. 1856-1930), of Prairie du Chien, John Adams, and other matters; presented by Wisconsin; documenting the wealthy family's Caroline Chamberlain and Mable Adams, financial affairs, the younger Hercules Dous- Madison, and Claudia Chamberlain, Huron, nian's art collection and stock farm for trotting South Dakota. horses, management of properties in Wiscon­ Records, 1974—1983, oi Christians fin Social­ sin and St. Louis, and involvement in the fur ism in the U.S., a reflection and action group trade, lumbering, steamboats, railroading, formed to promote societal change; including and other business concerns; including corre­ chapter files, general correspondence, finan­ spondence with many prominent Wisconsin cial reports, national coordinating committee residents; entire collection presented by Mrs. minutes, and other records documenting ac­ F. R. Bigelow, St. Paul, Minnesota; by Gladys tivities in publications, labor support, creation Lynch, Milwaukee; and by the Villa Louis his­ of an audio-visual presentation on Catba, and toric site. 158 ACCESSIONS

Addiuonal records, I95I-I980, oitheFir.st of the Black World, Nairobi College in Cali­ Unitarian Society, Madison, Wisconsin, including fornia, SNCC position papers, the Soledad the plans of their Frank Lloyd Wright meeting Brothers, the Venceremos Brigade, and War­ house, minutes, reports, correspondence, and ren Widener, mayor of Berkeley, California; other records; presented by the Society via the loaned for copying by Tom W. Shick, Madi­ Reverend Max Gaebler. son. Papers, 1957-1968, of a politician and Additions to the papers of the Socialist Labor multi-term Attorney General of Wisconsin, Party of America; consisting of National Execu­ Branson C. La Follette (1936 ); including tive Committee and Sub-Committee minutes, personal correspondence, campaign materi­ 1878-1889, 1893-1921, and printed proceed­ als, speeches and press releases, papers from ings, 1919, I934-I967, which include minutes his work for the federal government as a con­ and reports of the National Secretary, the edi­ sumer advocate, and other records; presented tor of the Weekly People, and of the various by Mr. La Follette, Madison, Wisconsin. Language Federations; parts presented by the Papers, 1964-1980, of pediatrician and SEP and parts loaned for copying by Frank health activist Fitzhugh Mullan (1942 ) con­ Girard and Benson Perry. cerning his work with the Student Health Or­ Publications, 1876-1964, of the Society for ganization (SHO) in Chicago and the Lincoln Ethical Culture, a nontheological, humanistic Hospital Collective in New York City, and the religious fellowship founded in 1876 by Felix book and numerous articles he wrote on his Adler, including general material, literature experiences and other health topics; pre­ on education, addresses by members, and sented by Mr. Mullan, Garrett Park, Mary­ other publications; presented by the Society, land. New York, New York. Papers, 1925-1960, oi Herbert J. Naujoks Papers, 1866-1938, oi Francis Edward Ste­ (1902—1961), legal counsel and president of wart (1853-1941), a physician, corporate the Great Lakes Harbors Association, con­ pharmacist, and author who worked to estab­ cerning the Chicago-Lake Michigan water di­ lish pharmaceutical standards, change patent version case, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and and trademark laws, and increase cooperation other topics relevant to the Great Lakes; pre­ between physicians and pharmacists; includ­ sented by Mrs. Naujoks, Wilmette, Illinois. ing correspondence, articles, papers from Records, 1967-1969, of the North Bolivar professional organizations, and personal pa­ County Farm Cooperative, Mound Bayou, Mis­ pers; presented by Mrs. Robert P. Fischelis, sissippi, an agricultural and food cooperative Ada, Ohio. organized by black Mississippians; including Congressional office papers, 1952-1979, of administrative records, materials on the William A. Steiger (1938-1978) of Oshkosh, Tufts-Delta Health Center, and tape- representative from Wisconsin's 6th District, recorded interviews with Cooperative leaders 1967—1978; including correspondence, files and members on the Cooperative and their on legislation and local grants and issues, press lives generally; presented by the Cooperative. material, reference files, and brief personal Papers, 1960-1973, ofyac^B. Olson(l920— files; containing information on the Williams- —), a former Wisconsin lieutenant governor Steiger Bill establishing OSHA, the Steiger and a leader in the tourist industry; consisting amendment reducing capital gains taxation, entirely of political papers, including general congressional reform, the all-volunteer army, correspondence, speeches, materials from his manpower legislation, legal services for the 1970 campaign for governor, correspondence poor, and other topics; presented by Janet with Richard M. Nixon and his staff, and other Steiger, Washington, D.C, via Maureen papers; presented by Jack B. Olson and Sheila Drummy. Whaley, Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton. (RE­ Papers, 1957-1976, of Madison social STRICTION: The Nixon correspondence for worker Sarah Campbell Webb (1916 ) con­ 1969—1973 is closed to researchers). cerning family life and adult education orga­ Papers, 1966-1976, concerning civil rights nizations in which she participated; including and black history, collected by Tom W. Shick, a newsletters, clippings, minutes, correspon­ U.W. professor in Afro-American Studies; in­ dence, and notes from the Dane County cluding files on an alleged 1967 conspiracy to Council on Family Living, the Adult Educa­ assassinate Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young, tion Association of Wisconsin, and other the 1972 Black Political Convention, Institute groups; presented by Sarah Campbell Webb, Madison. 159 Contributors Madison, and, since 1973, the University of Cal­ ifornia, Santa Cruz. Dr. Osterbrock was director of its Lick Observatory until 1981. His avocation is the history of astronomy, particu­ larly the rise of astrophysics during the big- telescope era in the United States. His longar- ticle on Lick Observatory's first director, "The Rise and Fall of Edward S. Holden," recently appeared in two parts in the J ournal of the Histoiy of Astronomy, and his hook, James E. Keeler, Pio­ neer American Astrophysicist, and the Early Develop­ ment of American Astrophysics, was just released by Cambridge University Press.

THOMAS DOHERTY graduated from Beloit Col­ lege and attended graduate school at the Uni­ versity of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He taught English at the Universitv of Wisconsin—Eau Claire and now works at Central Wisconsin Center in Madison. His interest in the 32nd Division was sparked by unflattering references to the division in Wil­ liam Manchester's biography of Douglas Mac- Arthur,/I wmcaw Caesar. Readers interested in the full story of the campaign Manchester al­ luded to should read Victory in Papua by Samuel Milner, a volume in official history of the U.S. Army in World War II and one of the most ex­ haustively researched studies of an American PAUL W. GLAD was a member of the Depart­ division in combat. ment of History at the University of Wisconsin- Madison from 1966 to 1977. Although he has moved to the University of Oklahoma, where he holds the Merrick Chair of American His­ tory, he continues to maintain close ties with Wisconsin. He is currently writing the fifth vol­ ume of the Society's History of Wisconsin, focus­ ing on the years from 1914 to 1940. His article on John Barleycorn in this issue oi \he Magazine is a revision of his Founders Day addiess to the State Historical Society in February, 1984. Glad's other publications include two books on William Jennings Bryan, one on the elecdon of 1896, and an interpretive survey of American history since 1876.

DONALD E. OSTERBROCK received his under­ graduate and graduate education at the Uni­ versity of Chicago, where he completed his doc­ toral degree in astronomy in 1952. He is a research astronomer who has served on the fac­ ulties of Caltech, the University of Wisconsin-

160 THE BOARD OF CURATORS

THOMAS H. BARLAND, Eau Claire WILLIAM C. KIDD, Racine

MRS. B. L. BERNHARDT, Cassville NEWELL G. MEYER, Eagle

PATRICIA A. BOGE, La Crosse GEORGE H. MILLER, Ripon

DAVID E. CLARENBACH, Madison JOHN M. MURRY, Hales Corners

E. DAVID CRONON, Madison FREDERICK I. OLSON, Wauwatosa

MRS. JAMES P. CZAJKOWSKI, Wauzeka FRED A. RISSER, Madison

MRS. L. PRENTICE EAGER, JR., Evansville BRIAN D. RUDE, Coon Valley

C. P. Fox, Baraboo DR. LOUIS C. SMITH, Cassville

PAUL C. GARTZKE, Madison ROBERT SMITH, Seymour

MRS. HUGH F. GWIN, Hudson MRS. WILLIAM H. L. SMYTHE, Milwaukee

WILFREDJ. HARRIS, Madison WILLIA.M F. STARK, Pewaukee

MRS. RICHARD L, HARTZELL, Grantsburg DANIEL O, THENO, Ashland

NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN, Madison WILSON B, THIEDE, Madison

KIRBY HENDEE, Madison ROBERT S. TRAVIS, Platteville

MRS. FANNIE HICKLIN, Madison CHARLES TWINING, Ashland

WILLIAM HUFFMAN, Wisconsin Rapids EDWARDJ. VIRNIG, New Berlin

MRS. PEIER D. HUMLEKER, JR., Fond du Lac GERALD D. VISTE, Wausau

BLAKE R. KELLOGC;, Madison CLARK WILKINSON, Baraboo MRS. MICHAEL MCKEEVER, Prairie du Chien

ROBERT M. O'NEIL, President of the University ROBERT B, L, MVRPHY, Pre.siderU of the Wisconsin History Foundation

MRS. WILLIAM B. JONES, President of the

Friends of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin MRS, VIVIAN (JUZNICZAK, Chairman, Wisconsin Council for Local History

Frie'nds of the State Historical Society ofW isconsin

MRS, WILLIAM B.JONES, MRS, WILLIAM J, WEBSTER, TWO Rivers, Fort Atkinson, President Secretary MRS. RICHARD G. JACOBUS, Milwaukee, WILSON B. THIEDE, Madison, Treasurer Vice-President MRS. JOHN ERSKINE, Racine, Past President

Fellows Curators Emeritus

VERNON CARSTENSEN ROBERT H, IRRMANN, Beloit MERLE CURTI MRS. EDWARD C, JONES, Fort Atkinson ALICE E. SMITH HOWARD W. MEAU, Madison MILO K, SWANTON, Madison THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY SHALL promote a wider appreciation of the American heritage with particular emphasis on the collection, advancement and dissemination of knowledge of the history of Wisconsin and of the West. —Wisconsin Statutes, Chapter 44

WHi (X3) 40.589 On parade between the wars. Courtesy the Wisconsin National Guard.

^^^TE Hisro^

CO en V '''^'' c^ ^ OF WlSC