Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/92

 period terminating with the Civil War, appear to have been marked by mutual respect, if not active friendship. At all events, if there were differences causing ill will on one side or the other, these—so far as they were the outgrowth of the social, economic, or commercial interplay of the two groups—rarely became serious enough to be reflected in the public press. The prosperity of the city, providing usually full employment and adequate returns to all who wanted to work, made the bond between capitalist and employees satisfactory, and this solved one important aspect of the class problem. The absence of any decided public interest in the immigrant problem as affecting the city—other than politically—is a fact which obtrudes itself upon one who canvasses the Milwaukee papers, English and German, during the fourteen years which intervened between the first constitutional convention and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.

Yet, there are not wanting evidences that the two groups were quite distinct and that the Germans, as a foreign group, were sensitively class conscious. This is shown, for example, by the race appeals in their business advertisements. To call attention to one's nationality when offering services of a personal nature, like those of the physician, or the dentist, or even the druggist, is reasonable and correct. But there is no good ground for assuming that nationality makes a difference to the purchaser of lime. Why then the advertisement of a Deutsche Kalk Haus(German lime house), unless there was a feeling that the German dealer would be favored by German buyers simply because he was German? This is a typical example which goes to show the existence of a city within a city, a German Milwaukee which tended to live its own group life, for which, as already explained, it possessed, within itself, great facilities.