Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/658

Rh 618 WISCONSIN ing and meat-packing product at about 6,534,000 and agricultural implements at $3,742,000. Lumbering. The proximity of Wisconsin to the prairie States renders its lumbering interests especially important. In 1886 the total forest area of the State was 17,000,000 acres, or 48 - 8 per cent, of the whole area. According to the census of 1880, Wisconsin was exceeded only by Michigan and Pennsylvania in the value of its lumber product. Operations are chiefly carried on along the Menomonee, Peshtigo, Oconto, Wolf, Wisconsin, Yellow, Black, Chippewa, Red Cedar, and St Croix rivers ; but the rapid increase in railroads has opened the northern forests very generally. The lumber, shingles, and lath manufactured amounted to about 3,323,390,000 feet in 1885. Mines and Quarries. In 1880 Wisconsin ranked sixth among the iron-producing States, but since then its importance lias in creased. The most extensive iron deposits occur in the Huronian formation in the Menominee region, and along the Montreal river. In 1S82 the total product of the Menominee region was 276,017 tons ; the Montreal range, divided between Wisconsin and Michigan, about a dozen miles south of Lake Superior, has just been opened up, and there is a rich deposit of Bessemer ore. In 1886 the pro duct of the whole range was about 800,000 tons. The lead and zinc region lies in the south-west of the State; production had been declining, but recently new discoveries have revived it. There is a rich supply of building-stone; limestone quarries are most numerous, but the red-brown sandstone of Bayiield county and the granite of Marquette county are especially valued. FisJwries. The white iish and lake-trout fishing industries of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior are extensive, and the inland lakes 1 and streams abound in bass, pike, pickerel, sturgeon, and brook-trout. A State fisheries commission annually stocks the waters with brook-trout, white fish, and pike. Railways and Canals. There were in Wisconsin in June 1886 4576 miles of railway. The leading lines are the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St Paul ; the Chicago and North- Western ; the Chicago, Min neapolis, St Paul, and Omaha; the Milwaukee, Lake Shore, and Western ; and the Wisconsin Central. A canal connects the Fox and AVisconsin rivers at Portage, and the Sturgeon Bay Canal unites Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Administration, &amp;lt;L-c. The State, which is divided into sixty- eight counties, is represented in the Congress of the United States by two senators and nine representatives. The supreme court is composed of a chief justice and four associate justices; there are fourteen judicial circuits, each with a judge ; and besides these are county and municipal judges and justices of the peace. The State legislature, composed of the senate (33 members) and the assembly (100 members), meets bieiiially. Finances. The value of all taxable property of the State for the year 1886, as determined by the State board of assessment, was as follows : personal property, $114,922,900; city and village lots, $110,564,625; lands, $271,019,627; total assessed value of all property, $496,507,152. Taxes were as follows : State tax, $7,835,385. The total indebtedness of the towns, cities, villages, and school districts in 1885 was $6,848,123; total indebtedness of counties, $1,569,444; bonded debt of the State, $2,252,000. Charitable, Reformatory, and Penal Institutions. The State sup ports two hospitals for the insane, containing together 1141 inmates in 1885, while there are 1240 insane in county asylums, jails, and poorhouses. The school for the deaf has an attendance of 205, school for the blind, 62 ; industrial school for boys, 292 ; industrial school for girls, 268; State prison school, 443; a school for de pendent children has just been established. The whole number of prisoners in all places of confinement during 1885 was 19,829, and in reformatories 771. The State board of control and the board of charities and reforms have charge of these institutions. Education. The State makes liberal provision for its public schools; it sets apart as a permanent fund the Federal grant of section 16 in each township, with 500,000 acres of land, and 5 per cent, of the proceeds of the sale of public lands in the State, together with less important items. In 1886 there were still 103,130 acres unsold, and the amount of the fund at interest was nearly $3,000,000. This school-fund income, which in 1887 was $341,289, is supplemented by a State tax of one mill on the dollar, which amounted to $396,138; the combined amount is annually apportioned among the counties, towns, villages, and cities in pro portion to the number of children in each of from four to twenty years of age ; in their turn the counties must levy upon each town, city, and village a tax equal to their proportion of the com bined school fund and State mill tax. The total receipts from all sources for school purposes in 1886 was $4,192,962, and the dis bursements $3,184,958. In the same year there were 556,093 persons of school age. Of these 59 &quot;4 per cent, were enrolled in the public schools. The enrolments in normal schools and uni versity (2481), in colleges, seminaries, and academies (1131), and 1 There are about 3000 square miles of clear-water lakes. in private schools (14,164) made the total enrolment over 350,000. In 1879 attendance at a public or private school for at least twelve weeks each year was made compulsory on all children between the ages of seven and fifteen years. Women are eligible to all school oifices, except that of State superintendent of public instruction. In 1888 there are 137 free high schools, receiving special aid from the State. Provision is made for the education of teachers by the five normal schools. The leading denominational colleges are Beloit, Ripon, Milton, Racine, and Lawrence university. The public school system is crowned by the State university at Madison, organized in 1848. It derives its support chiefly from an annual State tax of one-eighth of a mill on the dollar. The total regular income of the university in 1886 was $105,000; the attendance in 1887 was 600. Connected with the university are a teachers institute lectureship and farmers institutes held in different por tions of the State, as well as over sixty accredited high schools. The State historical society at Madison, the capital, has a refer ence library of 125,000 volumes and pamphlets, and is the richest in the nation upon the history of the Mississippi basin ; the State law library there has 19,000 volumes, the university library 14,500, and the city library 9000. Milwaukee has a public library of 35,000 volumes. Antiquities and History. The State is noted for its exceptionally large number of animal mounds, the work of the &quot;mound-builders.&quot; They are found along rivers and lake banks, and are from 2 to 6 feet high, sometimes 200 feet long ; remains of prehistoric cir- cumvallations, with brick baked in situ, have been found, and the largest collection of prehistoric copper implements has been made in this State. Wisconsin was the meeting ground of the Algonkin and Dakota Indian tribes. Its water system connecting the Great Lakes and the Mississippi made it the keystone of the French possessions in Canada and Louisiana. The genesis of Wisconsin was from the fur trade. French explorers, ascending the Ottawa, crossed to Lake Huron, whence they easily passed through the Straits of Mackinaw to Green Bay, thence up the Fox to the portage between it and the Wisconsin, and on to the Mississippi. In 1634 an agent of Champlain, Jean Nicolet, first of recorded white men to reach Wisconsin soil, ascended the Fox a considerable distance. In 1658-59 Radisson and Groseilliers, two fur traders who afterwards induced England to enter the Hudson Bay region, passing along the south shore of Lake Superior, struck southward to the tributaries of the Mississippi. Radisson s journal describes a great river visited by him, which was probably the Mississippi. In 1665 Father Claude Allouez founded a Jesuit mission at La Pointe, and in 1669 the mission of St Francis Xavier on the shores of Green Bay. Louis Joliet, leaving Quebec under orders to dis cover the South Sea, in 1673, took with him Father Marquette from Mackinaw, and readied the Mississippi by the diagonal water way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. In 1679 La Salle, accom panied by Father Hennepin, passed along the western shore of Lake Michigan to- the Illinois, and in the next year Hennepin, ascending the Mississippi, met Du Luth, who had reached it by way of the western extremity of Lake Superior. Thus were traced out the bounds and principal river-courses of Wisconsin. The epoch of the fur trade followed, during which stockade posts were erected at various key-points on the trading routes ; they became depend encies of Mackinaw, long the emporium of the fur trade. In the French and Indian war of 1755-60 Wisconsin savages served under Charles de Langlade against the English at Braddock s defeat and elsewhere. Near the middle of the 18th century De Langlade and his father had established a trading post at Green Bay, which after wards became a fixed settlement ; at the close of the revolutionary war Prairie du Chien, at the mouth of the Wisconsin, grew into a like settlement ; and towards the close of the century Milwaukee, La Pointe, and Portage became permanent trading posts. The British garrison that was sent in 1761 to hold Green Bay left at the outbreak of Pontiac s war, and did not return. In the revolutionary war Wisconsin Indians under De Langlade supported the British. England having retained Mackinaw despite the treaty of 1783, American domination was not practically felt by the Wisconsin traders until after the war of 1812. In this war they favoured Great Britain, and in 1814 the latter wrested Prairie du Chien from an American detachment. But the formation of Astor s American Fur Company to deal in this region was followed by a United States law excluding English traders, which resulted in an increase of American influence. At the close of the war the United States placed forts at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. By the ordinance of 1787 Wisconsin had been a part of the territory north-west of the river Ohio; in 1800 it was included in Indiana Territory, whence in 1809 it passed to Illinois Territory, and in 1818 to Michigan Territory. In 1825 the lead-mines in south-western AVisconsin, which had been known from the earliest days of French exploration, and had been worked by the Sacs and Foxes and by Winnebagoes, attracted a considerable mining population. Hos tilities with the Winnebagoes followed, resulting in the cession by the latter of the lead region, and the erection of Fort Winnebago in 1828 at Portage. In 1832 occurred Black Hawk s War, occasioned
 * 241,137 ; county taxes, $2,590,375; town, city, and village taxes,