Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/73

 the most important edifice of the establishment. There were some Irish people, too, and some native Americans from New England or New York State, who owned farms, or ran the bank and a manufacturing shop or two, and two or three law offices. But these different elements of the population were all on a footing of substantial equality—neither rich nor poor, ready to work and enjoy life together, and tolerant of one another's peculiarities. Of culture and social refinement there was, of course, very little. Society was no longer in the pioneer stage, the backwoods condition. But it had the characteristic qualities of newness. There were churches, and schools, and hotels, all very simple, but decent in their appointments, and, on the whole, reasonably well conducted. There was a municipal organization, a city government, constructed according to law, officered by men elected by the people. And these people had but recently flocked together from different quarters of the globe. There were comparatively few persons among them who, having been born in this country, had grown up in the practical experience of the things to be done, and of the methods usually followed for the purpose. A large majority were foreign to the tradition of this republic. The task of solving certain problems by the operation of unrestrained municipal self-government, and of taking part through the exercise of the suffrage in the government of a State, and even of a great republic, was new to them. In Wisconsin the immigrant became a voter after one year's residence, no matter whether he had acquired his citizenship of the United States, or not: it was only required that he should have regularly abjured his allegiance to any foreign state or prince, and declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States. And of such early voters there were a good many.

This seemed to be, therefore, an excellent point of