Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/17

 counties), and less than one-thirtieth in Rock County, the farthest west of the strip.

The movement into the prairies and openings of the southeast had been going on for about four years before the Germans began coming to Wisconsin, and so many selections of first choice, second choice, and even third choice land had been made that newcomers were already at a disadvantage in that region, especially if a number of them desired to settle near together in a body, which was the case of Old Lutheran congregations who made up the earliest German immigrations. Moreover, most of the Yankees were business-like farmers who generally planned for fairly large farms, in order to make money by raising wheat. They were mainly men who had sold small farms in the East in order to secure larger, or sons of large farmers. Most of them had money or credit to enable them to acquire land, construct buildings and fences, buy stock, and begin farming operations. Having found good land by canvassing the whole region, they were not to be dislodged until, with the failure of wheat crops at a later time, the spirit of emigration sent numbers of them to fresh wheat lands farther west, thus making opportunity for well-to-do Germans to buy their improved farms, which they did to a great extent.

Meantime, the forested lands pivoting on Milwaukee, the most promising of the lake ports, were open to entry at the land office or to purchase at private sale on easy terms. The Yankee had not altogether shunned those lands. There, as elsewhere, he had been looking for good investments, and the project for the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, which was to traverse a portion of the forested area through the present Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Jefferson counties, favored speculation in farm lands as well as in mill sites and town sites. Besides, there is evidence that some of the poorer Yankee immigrants who felt unable at once to