Economic History of Wisconsin During the Civil War Decade |
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Agric agricultural Assem Association Bank Comptroller bankers bill Black River Falls bonds bushel capital centers cents Chamber of Commerce chap Chicago & Northwestern Chippewa Chippewa River Civil close consin consolidation coöperation County crop Crosse Democrat currency decade Dodge County early eastern Eau Claire farm mortgagors farmers flour forest freight Governor Randall grain Green Bay Hartford Home League Ibid increased industry interest Jour La Crosse labor Lake Michigan land later legislature lines logs lumber Madison manufacture merchants mills Milwaukee & Prairie Milwaukee & St Milwaukee Chamber Milwaukee Daily Wis Milwaukee Sentinel Minnesota Mississippi River mortgages northern Northwest operation organized Packet Paul pineries pounds Prairie du Chien rafts rail railroad railroad companies rates region Report road sawmill season secured Sept sixties southern spring steamboat tion Trans transportation Union vessels wages waukee wheat Wisconsin Historical York
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Page 45 - ... Wisconsin, summed the matter up as follows : "People are everywhere saving of the costly factor and extravagant of the cheap factor; hence the early agriculture in Wisconsin was mere land skinning. Better tillage, accompanied with the use of manures and other fertilizers, would not, upon the virgin soil, have added sufficiently to the yield to pay the cost of applying them. Hence to the first farmers of the state, poor farming was the only profitable farming and consequently the only good farming,...
Page 39 - Gathering renewed force with every new acre planted in the county of Sauk, where it may be said to have originated, and where the crop of 1865 was over half a million of pounds, it spread from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from county to county, until by 1867 it had hopped the whole State over...
Page 180 - By the spring of 1867 public' interest in the eight-hour question was at its height. In his annual message of that year Governor Fairchild officially called the attention of the legislature to the matter. ''To the men of the West," he declared, "most of whom have at some time been laboring men, surely no argument is needed to show that those who create the wealth of the country should be afforded every possible facility for participating in its enjoyment, and that the non-producers should not enjoy...
Page 57 - A million of men have returned from the war, been disbanded in our midst and resumed their former occupations, and yet from all sides we hear the surest of all signs of national prosperity, complaints of the scarcity of labor." The question as to how the veterans and the immigrants were absorbed after the war, is easier to answer, than that as to how the country fared without their labor during it. The great bulk of those who did not simply fit into old places, bought land and extended the agricultural...
Page 40 - The railroad companies are utterly unable to furnish cars for the accommodation of the countless throngs who daily find their way to the depots * * * to take the cars for the hop fields. Every passenger car is pressed into service, and freight and platform cars are fixed up as well as possible for the transportation of the pickers.
Page 170 - ... whose deck hands were striking for higher wages, brought in from Cincinnati 300 to 400 negroes in their places. Thenceforth the substitution of black for white rousters was rapid, accompanied by a swift decline in wages, and before 1870 negroes were in almost complete possession of the trade.2T The introduction of machinery seriously affected several trades in the State during the war, though it led to no such direct clashes with labor as occurred in the East. The shoemakers were hardest hit....
Page 167 - ... employment of women as clerks in dry goods and fancy stores * * *. The Chicago Republican lately said that every young man who sold dry goods, boots, or shoes, hats and caps, etc. behind a counter ought to be ashamed of himself. This is somewhat stronger than we are disposed to put the case; but it is a step in the right direction.
Page 32 - At that time hundreds of fields in every section of the State greeted the eye of the traveler with the pleasing spectacle of this luxuriant crop, lifting its millions of plume-like panicles rejoicingly in the autumn sun. On every hand groaned and creaked the crowded mill, and upward curled the cloud of vapor and smoke as incense to Ceres for this, her latest and most wonderful gift. Scores of inventors spent sleepless nights and secluded days in contriving " excelsior " and " climax
Page 170 - The inventions which seriously affected the shoemakers began with the introduction of the power pegging machine at Lynn and Philadelphia in 1857. In 1862 the McKay sole sewing machine was invented, which in one hour accomplished the work of a journeyman in eighty, and following that came such a flood of others as induced the Massachusetts commissioner of labor in 1871 to remark that invention seemed to be centering about the shoemaking industry. See The Knigkts of St. Crispin, 1867-1874, University...
Page 124 - We are sending our hard lumber east to get it back as furniture and agricultural implements, we ship ores to St. Louis and New York, to pay the cost of bringing it back as shot, type, pipe, sheet lead, white lead, paint, etc...