Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/46

 year. When Yankee farmers retired to the city, or went into business, which in recent decades they have done by thousands, Germans were among those who were the keenest bidders for their farm properties. In a word, the German has succeeded agriculturally through the more and more perfect functioning, in this new land, of qualities imparted by the training and inheritance which he brought with him from the old world. On the whole, Germans have kept clear of speculation, preferring to invest their savings in neighboring lands with which they were intimately familiar, or to lend to neighboring farmers on farm mortgage security. In the aggregate, German farmers in Wisconsin have long had vast sums at interest. The Institute for Research in Land Economics (University of Wisconsin) has completed investigations which show that the nation's area of lowest farm mortgage interest rates (5.2 per cent or less) coincides very closely with the great maple forest of eastern Wisconsin, which has been held, from the first, predominantly by German farmers.

We have no desire to minimize the factor contributed to Wisconsin's agriculture by the Yankees. They were the prophets and the organizers of the farmers' movement. Their inherent optimism, their speculative bent, their genius for organization were indispensable to its success. "Anything is possible to the American people," shouted the mid-century American orator from a thousand Fourth of July rostrums, therein merely reflecting what the mass of his hearers religiously believed. When agriculture had to be remade in Wisconsin, the Yankee's intelligence told him in what ways it must be improved, and his tact, courage, and address enabled him to enlist and organize the means for remaking it. When the Yankee was convinced, by his farm paper or by the exhibitions, that a purebred animal was a good investment, his speculative spirit sent him to his banker to borrow a thousand dollars, and to a distant