Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/87

 ment—merchants, for example, learning the language themselves, or at least keeping clerks in their establishments who could speak it, in order to attract German trade.

The emigration which began in 1839 as a religious movement, a congregation of Old Lutherans fleeing the pressure of the illiberal policy of Prussia's king, was continued thereafter mainly from economic and social motives. An examination of the census schedules of 1850 for Milwaukee reveals its general character better than volumes of reminiscent testimony. The census shows that, among the 5958 Germans in the city, 1165 (if the count is accurate) were craftsmen. There were house carpenters, ship carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, cabinet makers, masons, plasterers, painters, brickmakers, tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, watchmakers, coppersmiths, silversmiths and goldsmiths, barbers, bakers, brewers, cigar makers, musicians, sailors, and many more. In contrast to the large number of craftsmen, those employed at common labor numbered only 461, while the aggregate of those who may be described as business men was 248. A total of 45 persons fall in the class of professional men. Many, even of the laborers, possessed some property, thus showing that they were of a substantial, home-making type. A good many of the craftsmen owned homes, some of the business men were possessed of real estate to an appreciable extent, and there were a very few capitalists whose properties were valued at from $20,000 to $50,000.

The significance to the city of having among the population so large a body of thoroughly trained and skilled artisans cannot readily be overstated. It toned up all building operations and enabled them to keep pace with the city's rapidly growing needs; it facilitated the establishment and expansion of industries depending upon a full supply of skilled labor; it gave the city a fine body of industrious, well paid residents as homemakers and citizens—at a time