Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/34

 settlers in those sections, particularly Vermont, western New York, northern Pennsylvania and Ohio, from which the bulk of the Yankee pioneers of Wisconsin were drawn a quarter of a century later. The effect of county and state fairs was to deepen and fructify the influence of the new agricultural press.

It will be understood that the actual "shoring up" of agricultural practice came about with relative slowness. Yet, it soon began here and there, and by a kind of mild infection spread gradually over wide areas. Only in crisis periods, with the introduction of new methods to suit new market conditions, was progress ever very rapid. To illustrate, as early as 1820 Josiah Quincy was advocating and practising the summer soiling of cattle, especially milch cows, and demonstrating the profitableness of the system for the region near Boston. It was a long time before soiling became common even in that district, but this experiment engendered better care of livestock. The same careful, experimental farmer demonstrated the economy of using good-sized whole potatoes for seed, as against the practice of planting seed ends and small tubers; other farmers were slow to adopt the idea, which is not yet universally followed, yet some improvement doubtless came from the publication of Quincy's findings.

What, then, were the general farming habits of the Yankees who form the background of Wisconsin's pioneer age? First of all, they lived in decent houses which were usually of lumber. Dwight contended that not one New England village in a hundred was disfigured with the presence of even one log house. He also gives the result of a count made in 1810 of the log houses along the road from New Haven to Windsor in Vermont, thence across the Green Mountains to Middlebury, and back by a direct route to New Haven, a distance of over 460 miles, much of it through new settlements. It showed only fifteen to