There remains the historically important Milwaukee industry of beer-brewing, popularly supposed to have been introduced by immigrants from Munich and other centers of beer manufacture in the fatherland. The census lists a total of ten establishments designated as breweries. Of these, seven were owned by Germans and three by non-Germans. The investments by the latter aggregated $27,000, those of the former $20,900. But the sum of the annual products of the German breweries was $41,062, while the aggregate product of the others was $32,425. The non-German brewery which had the largest investment was doing an annual business valued at less than the investment, while one of the German breweries having only $3000 invested reported a product valued at $18,000.[52]
When we consider mercantile lines as distinguished from the industrial, Germans were prominent in those which called for moderate investments. They had many small grocery stores scattered through the city, a number of meat markets, and of course a goodly proportion of liquor saloons. There were also several German clothing stores, confectioneries, and bakeries. That their business men expected to sell almost exclusively to Germans is indicated by the fact that for the most part they advertised only in the German language papers—the Wisconsin Banner and the Volksfreund,—not in the English papers. On the other hand, the American merchants, as we have already seen, catered to the German trade by providing German salesmen,[53] and they also advertised extensively in the German papers.
There were German taverns which did a thriving trade; the restaurants made the sojourner from Berlin feel at home; and the German beer gardens were the despair of the pious Yankee mothers of boys. So indispensable did German musicians become, that when the Sons of the Pilgrims banqueted, a brass band directed by a German bandmaster discoursed “martial as well as festive” music.
One other form of coöperation between Yankee and Teuton deserves to be mentioned—the employment of German girls in Yankee homes. This custom, testified to by German writers and indicated unmistakably by the census, was widespread. Such service was an immediate resource to the poorer immigrant families, and a boon to the American families as well. By that means numbers of future German homemakers came promptly into possession of the manners and customs of the Yankees, acquired their speech, and gained some insight into their distinctive views of life.
The least numerous of the special classes into which we have analyzed the German population of Milwaukee, in 1850, was the professional class. Yet it is not for that reason least important, for the little group of forty-five[54] persons contained most of the individuals whose views swayed public opinion among the 6000 Milwaukee Germans. Among them were two newspaper editors, each in charge of a German language paper. There were six lawyers, nine teachers, and eleven clergymen and preachers. Four of the preachers are described as German Lutheran, one was Evangelical, and one Methodist.[55] Two, Joseph Salzman and Franz Fusseden, were Catholic priests. One, F. W. Helfer, was called a “rationalist preacher.” Two, John Mühlhauser and G. Klügel, were merely called preachers.
It is not strange that medicine, among all the professions, should have had the strongest representation. A physician, wherever trained, is equipped to practice anywhere, while a lawyer, clergyman, editor, or teacher is obliged to prepare for service by first fitting himself into the community he is to serve. German medical education was far superior to American at that time, and, in the western states at least, the supply of trained physicians was below the requirements. There were communities in Wisconsin where not one-fourth of the practitioners were graduates of medical schools or had honestly earned the title of “doctor.”[56] This condition made a splendid opportunity for German physicians, who could hope to win the patronage of Americans as well as Germans. That the prospect was alluring to them is shown by the fact that Milwaukee at the census date in 1850 had seventeen German physicians, some of them already men of note in the community.
The Yankees and the Germans came into such close and intimate contacts in Milwaukee, that it is easier to study their normal attitudes there than in the outlying portions of the state. On the whole those relations, in the 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.
Occasionally some relatively minor happening threw this feeling of separateness into strong relief, as when, in 1850, a German scholar published in the Milwaukee papers of his language the story of his relations with the chancellor and board of regents of the University. He thought they had promised him a chair, but afterwards they made it plain that no contract had been closed with him. He may or may not have had cause of complaint. But what he professed to do was to lay the whole matter before the Germans of Wisconsin, in order that they might know how the board of regents “flouts the wishes of the German citizens,” how it keeps its promises “to Germans,” and how little it regards the rules of ordinary courtesy “in dealing with Germans.”[57] No doubt the design was to bring political pressure to bear on the regents, but the device would not have been resorted to had not the recognized racial unity among the Germans rendered that a hopeful plan.
In a society like the present Milwaukee, where inter-racial marriages are a daily occurrence, and one is rarely conscious of race in cases of that kind, the condition of seventy years ago seems almost incomprehensible. For, a close scrutiny of the entire census record for Milwaukee in 1850 reveals that marriages between Germans and Americans of all derivations at that time were excessively rare. The aggregate number of such unions was twelve. But of marriages between Yankees and Germans I can provisionally identify only six, as follows: Margaret, twenty-six years of age, born in Germany, was the wife of John H. Butler, a livery-stable keeper, born in New York. Hiram Brooks, twenty-seven, born in New York, was married to Mary, twenty-three, born in Hesse Darmstadt. James Ridgeway, thirty, a cooper, native of New York, was married to Mary, born in Prussia. Abram Davis, twenty-five, a cooper, born in New York, was married to C—, twenty-three, native of Bavaria. Joseph Stadter, thirty-three, physician, rated at $2000, who was born in Bavaria, was married to Sarah Ann, nineteen, born in New York (but a female who was a member of the family, and may have been this woman’s mother, bore a German name). Finally, William Stamm, thirty-two, painter, native of Bremen, was married to Lucy, twenty-eight, a native of Massachusetts.