Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/313

 excluding the states which require irrigation, the greatest in barley, oats and spring wheat; it is second in the amount of potatoes produced; the number of cows has increased in ten years some 47.7 per cent; in butter production, it has increased 70.4 per cent and in cheese production, 87.7 per cent. Surely the great investment which Wisconsin has made in her educational institutions has returned its original investment many times over in hard dollars and cents.

Granting that this prosperity may not be the result of this legislation, it may be good evidence that the Wisconsin legislature has proceeded with great caution and made its laws only after the most careful scrutiny of the delicate machinery of industry. It may be said that these conditions might have existed if none of these laws had been passed but the fact that prosperity has increased at a rate as great as, if not greater than, any state in the country, is evidence that if laws are made carefully and are made to fit into the harmony of industrial conditions, greater advances can be made than by following the wild shouts of reformers who would destroy without constructing.

The state has not suffered from heavy taxation either in the accomplishment of all these things. Wisconsin has no state debt (save money borrowed from its own school fund) and yet is building a $6,000,000 capitol building out of current taxation funds without debt.