Page:Charities v13 (Oct 1904-Mar 1905).pdf/228

 former freedom, many of the churches were re-established. Protestantism had, however, lost much of its strength. Among the less educated, Catholicism, at first bitterly distasteful, had become customary, and in the second generation sincere. Those, however, who knew Bohemian history and had read the story of Huss and Jerome, kept more nearly the ideals of their fathers. They could not but be hostile toward a nation and a church which had tried so utterly to crush them.

Then, in 1848, came the political revolution. Encouraged by the success of the French people against Louis Phillippe, the Bohemians again broke out in remonstrance. With the subdual of this outbreak came a reaction toward despotism in which is found the first impulse toward emigration. Large numbers left the country in the quest of freedom, and of these some found their way to America. Thus our first Bohemian settlers were of the most intelligent and more prosperous classes. Those who came West established themselves in two settlements, one in St. Louis and the other in Caledonia, Wis. (near Racine). In the next few years settlements spread to Milwaukee and Manitowoc counties. These first Bohemian farmers came almost without exception with money enough to buy their lands, at least in part. The country which they selected was heavily wooded so that their first great labor was to clear their farms. This they did by cutting and burning the logs, making no attempt to sell them as timber, as did their countrymen who came later. With farms wholly or in part paid for, they could direct all their energies toward clearing and cultivating the land, finding an immediate means of subsistance in small crops raised among the stumps. From this small beginning, the way to prosperity was clear. Their farms in Milwaukee county, directly north of Manitowoc, are among the finest in the state.

These were the centers toward which the subsequent immigration naturally drifted. By 1870 the greater part of the later-comers had arrived. These were mostly ambitious farm laborers and mechanics who hoped to find here an independent and more profitable livelihood. As they came with little or no money, their first need was for cheap farms upon which they could make a humble living from the very beginning. Such farms they found in the timber lands of Kewaunee county, directly north of Manitowoc. Here they settled in such large numbers that they still make up over one-third of the total population—6,000 of the 17,000 inhabitants of the county.

The early settler bought from forty to sixty acres of land, making only a small cash payment, and giving a mortgage for the rest. The price ranged from five to ten dollars an acre. With the help of his neighbors, who blazed trails as they came lest they should not be able to find the way back, he built a log cabin and felled a few trees to give space for a vegetable patch. Then came the serious work of clearing the land, and at the same time earning enough outside money to live and pay part of the debt. This was accomplished in various ways. Sometimes the head of the family and the eldest son worked part of the year in the nearest sawmill or in the logging camps of northern Michigan. Sometimes they went to the large farms to the south of Michigan to help during the harvest. Very often they made hand-shaved pine shingles of the trees on their land, and exchanged them at the nearest market for what they most needed.

These were, indeed, hard years for our pioneers, but better times came after 1861. The war broke out and the forest products of which they had such an abundance, increased in price. Tan-bark, cedar posts for fencing, cord-wood, railroad ties—all found a market so good that the village shippers bought them as fast as they could be made and brought to the shipping piers. Many of these merchant lumbermen advanced money to the farmers with which to buy oxen and sleighs. They also took timber products in exchange for flour, cloth and other necessities, and in other ways the struggle for existence became less severe, the clearing of the lands went on more rapidly, and the farmers were able to meet more easily their living expenses and debts, notwithstanding war