Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/77

 a man governed by an intense purpose to accomplish a given task, whether interesting or not, and the same man intent on accomplishing nothing with every physical, intellectual, and emotional evidence of enjoying the process. Some men carry into their play the morale which governs them in their work; others import into their work the spirit of their play. In the case of the mid-nineteenth century German the two aspects of his existence, work and play, differed in spirit quite as much as in content.

The Germans had their Puritan sects, like the Moravians and other pietists, whose attitude was distinctly other-worldly, to whom play was a sedate if not a solemn activity. Such people disapproved of dancing and beer drinking Germans quite as heartily as of profane whiskey drinking and quarrelsome Americans or Irish. Individuals and colonies of the pietistic classes passed into the emigrations, and thus Wisconsin's German population contained most of the elements to be found at the same time in the German states. This illustrates one difficulty in generalizing about social characteristics; there are so many exceptions to be noted that the generalization loses much of its validity.

Craftsmanship was a prevalent accomplishment among the Germans of the early emigration. Every shipload of emigrants of which we have a social analysis had a large proportion of craftsmen, who were either established members of the city and village industrial class, or else belonged to the peasantry and had learned a craft in order to improve their status. Trades were learned exclusively under the apprenticeship system, the candidate usually living in the master's home and giving service at the master's will. When he reached the journeyman stage he was privileged to find work for himself, a quest which though usually fruitful in educational results often proved disappointing from a monetary point of view. In those cases the journeyman was peculiarly open to the temptation to emigrate. Arrived in