Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/86

150 behind Yankee leadership; and the English speaking section of the foreign population was not averse to doing the same, at least under ordinary circumstances. Often, indeed, such was the prestige of the Yankees, their initiative was followed unquestioningly by American and foreigner alike.

But the weight of numbers being with the Germans, the bulk of whom did not speak or read English—though there were numerous exceptions,—it was natural that there should have developed a community leadership within their own group, and such leadership would be determinative in cases of divergence from American ideas. The presence of this great body of non-English speaking persons, clothed with political power and wielding also a goodly share of economic power, especially as manifested in consumption, tended in itself to generate a more amiable attitude and more moderate policies on the part of the dominant class.

For the Germans were a coherent, prosperous, and growing element in the city. They began coming in 1839, and during the succeeding decade the annual accretions waxed gradually larger. After the revolution of 1848 the tide of emigration, especially from the countries and provinces along the Rhine, was swollen to unprecedented proportions, Milwaukee and the whole state profiting largely therefrom. But, already before 1850 Milwaukee's streets, business places, and homes were so habituated to German speech, that most visitors unhesitatingly described it as a German city. "In the colony of Herman alone," wrote Carl de Haas in 1848, "among all the United States is the population so preponderantly German." This writer also says, as do other chroniclers of his race, that not alone the speech of his country, but also the national habits and customs prevailed exceedingly in Milwaukee; that the Americans made many concessions to the Germanism of the environ-