WISCONSIN

WISCONSIN. Wisconsin's people have been molded by their diverse immigrant heritage, honest government born of midwestern progressivism, and glacial gifts of rich soils, scenic rivers, and about 9,000 freshwater lakes. Cradled between Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and the Mississippi River, Wisconsin's population in 2000 was 5,363,675.

Exploration and Fur Trade

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Winnebago, Menominee, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Fox, and Sauk peoples lived in harmony with the rolling hills, grassland prairies, pine forests, and scattered marshlands that became the state of Wisconsin. Deer, wolves, bald eagles, trumpeter swans, sand hill cranes, geese, and other wildlife populated the land. Native Americans grew corn and potatoes, harvested wild rice, speared fish, and built over 90 percent of North America's effigy mounds.

Jean Nicoletin 1634 and subsequent French explorers recognized that the cold climate of the Lake Superior basin produced the richest fur-bearing animals in French North America. In 1673, the Jesuit Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet discovered the Fox River–Wisconsin River all-water route from Green Bay, via a one-mile land portage, to the Mississippi River. The Fox-Wisconsin river route connecting Forts Howard (Green Bay), Winnebago (Portage), and Crawford (Prairie du Chien) became the key to the Wisconsin fur trade for 150 years. Marquette named the area Wisconsin, which he spelled Meskousing, roughly translated as "a gathering of waters." French voyageurs (licensed traders) and coureurs de bois (woods rangers) lived among and intermarried with Native Americans. Wisconsin beaver pelts and other furs were shipped to France via Fort Mackinac and Montreal. The 1763 British victory in the French and Indian War resulted in Scottish fur merchants replacing the French in Montreal. British Canadians traded in Wisconsin even after the American Revolution, until the American John Jacob Astor gained control in the early 1800s.

Wisconsin Territory and Early Settlement

In 1832, the Sauk chief Black Hawk returned from Iowa with 1,000 Native American men, women, and children to farm the southwestern Wisconsin homelands from which they had recently been expelled by settlers. Unplanned conflict erupted between the U.S. Army and the Sauk, who retreated up the Rock River and westward to the Wisconsin River. Following a rejected surrender attempt at Wisconsin Heights, Black Hawk withdrew down the Wisconsin River toward Iowa. He was trapped near the Mississippi–Wisconsin River confluence in a massacre at Bad Axe that left 150 survivors. The Black Hawk War resulted in Native American cession of most Wisconsin land to the United States in 1832–1848, opening the way for rapid population growth, from 3,245 in 1830 to 305,391 in 1850.

The lead mine region of southwestern Wisconsin experienced an influx of migrants from the southern frontier of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri in the 1830s. They worked the mines, and gave the "Badgers" nickname to Wisconsin, because they burrowed into the earth like badgers. Family wheat farmers and shopkeepers from Yankee New England and upstate New York migrated to southeastern Wisconsin via the Erie Canal and Great Lakes in even larger numbers. As the majority, their territorial representatives passed an 1839 law prohibiting "business or work, dancing … entertainment … or sport" on Sunday. European immigrants would later ignore those restrictions.

Previously a part of Michigan Territory, Wisconsin Territory was established in 1836. It encompassed present-day Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the eastern Dakotas. The territorial legislature selected the pristine and unpopulated Four Lakes wilderness (which would become Madison) to be the permanent state capital location over numerous other contenders, because it was both scenic and centrally located between the two population centers of the wheat-farming southeast and lead-mining southwest. Additionally, the Whig politician and land speculator James Doty owned much Four Lakes property, some of which he generously shared with legislators.

Statehood and Civil War

Wisconsin became the thirtieth state in 1848, establishing a 15–15 balance between free and slave states. The Wisconsin constitution and ensuing laws implemented the frontier concepts of elected judges, voting rights for immigrant noncitizens, and property ownership rights

for married women. Transplanted New Englanders, descended from the Puritans and carrying the religious conviction that slavery was a moral evil, meant that Wisconsin would become a flash point of abolitionism in the 1850s.

Underground railroad activity flourished in Wisconsin following the passage of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Wisconsin church colleges (Beloit and Milton) established by New Englanders regularly helped runaway slaves. When the abolitionist newsman Sherman Booth was arrested for inciting a Milwaukee mob that freed the runaway Joshua Glover from jail, the Wisconsin Supreme Court nullified the Fugitive Slave Act. A group met in Ripon, Wisconsin, in response to the Booth arrest and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and established the Republican Party. Despite competing claims, the Republican National Committee has historically recognized Ripon as the GOP birthplace.

About 75,000 Wisconsinites (10 percent of the 1860 population) served in uniform during the Civil War. Most of them trained at Madison's Camp Randall, where the University of Wisconsin football stadium of the same name now stands. The war stimulated prosperity for wheat farmers and lead miners. Wisconsin women who were active in the Sanitary Commission provided medical and food supplies to soldiers. They were instrumental in building convalescent hospitals for Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners in Wisconsin. Although most residents supported the war effort, antidraft sentiments were strong in some immigrant communities.

European Immigrants Populate Wisconsin

Wisconsin's population grew from 305,391 in 1850 to 1,315,497 in 1880, of which 72 percent were foreign born or of foreign parentage. Additional European immigrants helped double the population to 2,632,067 by 1920. More than one hundred foreign-language newspapers were printed in Wisconsin in 1900. Most European immigrants were poor farm laborers who were drawn to America's farm frontier, which included Wisconsin. Not only could they find familiar work, but over time could own farms that dwarfed the largest old-country estates.

Due to their diverse backgrounds, Wisconsin's immigrants usually settled in communities and neighborhoods with their own countrymen. Consequently, for example, Koshkonong developed a Norwegian identity, Berlin a German identity, Monroe a Swiss identity, and Milwaukee neighborhoods were clearly Polish or Irish or German. The Fourth of July was celebrated exuberantly in immigrant communities as a statement of loyalty to the United States.

Wisconsin was populated most heavily by immigrants from Norway and the Germanies, but large numbers of Irish, Poles, English, Danes, Swedes, Swiss, Dutch, Belgians, and others also came. Most Hispanics, Greeks, Italians, southeast Asians, and African Americans from the South arrived later. Norwegian farmers formed the power base of twentieth-century La Follette progressivism. Germans from Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and elsewhere organized the turnverein (gymnastics) and liederkranz (singing) societies. Many Finnish dockworkers in Ashland and Superior embraced International Workers of the World union radicalism. Racine's J. I. Case and Mitchell Wagon Works had "Danes only" employment policies for decades. Wisconsin's rich and varied immigrant heritage is still celebrated in annual community events such as Stoughton's Syttende Mai (17 May, Norwegian Independence Day), New Glarus' Heidi Festival and William Tell Pageant, Jefferson's Gemuetlichkeit Days, and Milwaukee's International Folk Fair.

Pine Lumbering: Paul Bunyan's Footprints

Pine lumbering dominated northern Wisconsin from 1865 to 1920. Lumber barons such as Governor Cadwallader Washburn and Senator Philetus Sawyer controlled state politics. Lumber operations determined rail routes in the region, and the depots became the hubs around which Wisconsin small towns developed. With the exception of iron mining communities (Hurley) and shipping centers, most northern Wisconsin communities began as lumber or sawmill towns.

Lumberjacks cut trees from dawn to dusk during harsh Wisconsin winters. They lived in barracks, and their enormous appetites became legendary. As melting ice cleared, lumberjacks conducted huge river drives and faced the constant dangers of logjams up to fifteen miles long. After logs were processed by downstream sawmills, Wisconsin lumber was used by Milwaukee, Chicago, Great Lakes ships, and Mississippi River steamboats for construction and fuel. Iron and copper mines in northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan consumed lumber for mine shafts and smelting. When the process to manufacture paper from wood pulp was developed, the once separate paper and lumber industries were linked. Dairy farms used lumber for barns, fences, and fuel.

Northern Wisconsin's economy rose and fell with lumbering. When only the pine barrens remained, land values and population of northern Wisconsin counties declined from 1920 to 1970. Tax-delinquent land and abandoned farms were all too common until after World War II. Remaining woodlands were located primarily in national and state forests and on reservations.

Red Barn Country: America's Dairyland

A sign over the barn door of the dairy farmer W. D. Hoard (who served as governor from 1889 to 1891) carried the reverent reminder that "This is the Home of Mothers. Treat each cow as a Mother should be treated." Dairying became Wisconsin's agricultural giant as the wheat belt shifted to Kansas in the post–Civil War decades. Norwegian, Dutch, and German immigrants were familiar with dairying. Hoard founded Hoard's Dairyman magazine (1885) and the Wisconsin Dairyman's Association, and successfully promoted mandatory annual tuberculin testing for cows. Refrigeration added extensive milk and butter sales to an already profitable international cheese market. The University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture provided inventions (cream separator and butterfat tester) and improved breeding, feeding, and sanitary techniques to all Wisconsin farmers. By 1930, there were 2 million cows and 2,939,006 people in Wisconsin, and in rural counties the cows were in the majority. After the 1930s, Rural Electrification Administration power lines allowed farmers to milk by machine instead of by hand.

Although Wisconsin became "America's Dairyland," some farmers concentrated on hogs, corn, vegetables, hay, and other grains. The Door County peninsula became a leading cherry producer. Potato and soybean expansion came later. Almost all farmers raised chickens and joined their area farm cooperative.

Wisconsin family farms became a basic social unit as well as an efficient food producer. Neighbors collectively "exchanged works" during planting and harvesting seasons, and helped "raise" each other's barns. Their children attended one-room country schools from first through eighth grade. Farm social life centered around barn square dances, church socials, the county fair, and the country school. Until the advent of the automobile and tractor, workhorses pulled the plough, and livery stables and hitching posts dotted village business streets.

Industry and Transportation

Wisconsin's early industry was related to agriculture. Farm implement manufacturing (J. I. Case and Allis-Chalmers), meatpacking (Oscar Mayer and Patrick Cudahy), and leather tanning created jobs. Flour milling was the leading industry in 1880, and was surpassed only by lumber products (Kimberly-Clark paper) in 1900. The dairy industry was number one by the 1920s. Wisconsin's numerous breweries (Miller, Pabst, Schlitz, and Huber among them) were established by German immigrants. Ice harvesting provided refrigeration for the early dairy, meat, and brewery industries.

In the twentieth century, automobile (General Motors and Nash) and motorcycle (Harley-Davidson) manufacturing grew along with small-engine (Evinrude and Briggs Stratton) production. Oshkosh-b-Gosh jeans, Kohler plumbing ware, Ray-o-Vac batteries, and Johnson's Wax became familiar names worldwide. Machine tools and missile-control systems were less familiar but equally important components of Wisconsin's economy.

Wisconsin transportation evolved with the state's industrial growth. Inefficient plank roads and the old Military Road gave way to Milwaukee-based railroads that linked the rest of the state to Great Lakes shipping. Madison and Milwaukee city streetcars, mule driven and then electric powered, were replaced by buses. Paved-road construction steadily accelerated in the twentieth century, spurred initially by pressure from bicyclists. By the late twentieth century, Wisconsin's Midwest Express had become a major airline.

Progressivism and Politics

Wisconsin became a twentieth-century laboratory for progressive reform under the leadership of Robert La Follette (governor, 1901–1906; U.S. senator, 1906–1925) and his successors. Progressives democratized state politics by establishing the open primary election system, and democratized economic opportunity by creating state regulatory commissions. Wisconsin passed the first workers' compensation (1911) and unemployment compensation (1932) laws in the nation. Legislation required the creation of adult technical schools statewide. Public utilities were regulated. La Follette's sons "Young Bob" (U.S. senator, 1925–1947) and Philip (governor, 1931–1933, 1935–1939) continued the progressive tradition. Progressivism in Milwaukee translated into Socialist Party control of city government from the 1890s to 1960. The Socialists stayed in power by being good-government moderates who created neighborhood parks, improved city services, and won votes from the German ethnic population.

Conservation of natural resources has been a hallmark of twentieth-century Wisconsin progressivism. The Forest Crop Law (1927) encourages reforestation. The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison conducts wood, pulp, and paper research with a goal of more efficient usage. The state buyout and restoration of the Horicon Marsh began in 1940. Governors Gaylord Nelson (1959–1963) and Warren Knowles (1965–1971) signed Outdoor Recreation Act programs that became international conservation models. U.S. Senator Nelson (1963– 1981) sponsored the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and founded Earth Day.

Wisconsin had been a one-party Republican state since the Civil War. In 1934, the La Follette brothers left the Republican Party and formed the Wisconsin Progressive Party. Following a decade of Progressive versus Republican rivalry, the Progressives disintegrated. Youthful ex-Progressives joined the moribund Democratic Party and built it into a political equal of the Republicans by the 1960s.

Wisconsin during Two World Wars

During World War I, tensions ran high in Wisconsin. Many first-generation German Americans bought German war bonds prior to the U.S. entry into the war and were sympathetic to the old country throughout. Most Wisconsin families contributed their sons or home-front efforts to the war, even though the neutralist senator Robert La Follette and nine of the state's eleven congressional representatives voted against the declaration of war.

A generation later, Wisconsin was loyally in the World War II home-front lines with the rest of the nation. About 330,000 Wisconsin citizens served in uniform during the war, and more than 8,000 of them were killed in action. State industry rapidly converted to World War II production. The Badger Ordnance Works sprouted from farm fields near Baraboo to produce ammunition. General Motors and Nash Rambler plants assembled military vehicles. Ray-o-Vac developed leakproof batteries and manufactured shell casings and field radios. Allis-Chalmers made bomber electrical systems. Oscar Mayer packaged K rations. Manitowoc's Lake Michigan shipyard built 28 submarines, which would sink 130 Japanese and German warships. The University of Wisconsin developed the U.S. Armed Forces Institute to provide correspondence courses for soldiers recuperating in military and veterans' hospitals, many of whom enrolled at the University of Wisconsin on the GI Bill after the war.

Wisconsin Life in the Twenty-first Century

Cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities provide a high quality of life in modern Wisconsin. Free public education, the State Historical Society (1846), the Wisconsin School for the Visually Handicapped (1849), and America's first kindergarten (1856) established a state educational tradition. The University of Wisconsin (Madison) opened its classrooms in 1848 and was recognized worldwide as a leading research and teaching institution by 1900. The university's WHA Radio is America's oldest operating station. Alumni Research Foundation support has led to breakthroughs in cancer treatment. The Madison and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras are nationally acclaimed. Two medical schools, at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), result in high-quality health care throughout the state.

Wisconsin Badger football transcends the events on the field. Friday fish fries, Lutheran church lutefisk suppers, and Door County fish boils became beloved institutions. The Green Bay Packers, community-owned since the Great Depression, are so-named because the team founder, Curly Lambeau, a meatpacking-house worker, convinced his employer to buy the first uniforms. The annual Circus Train from Baraboo's Circus World Museum culminates in the Milwaukee Circus Parade. Northern Wisconsin holds the cross-country Birkebeiner ski race. Prior to the Milwaukee Brewers, baseball's Braves counted more than 300 booster clubs statewide during their Milwaukee years (1953–1965). Oshkosh hosts the annual Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-in. Wisconsin Dells' amphibious "ducks" (converted World War II landing craft) show river-and-woods scenery to tourists. Wisconsin's natural outdoor beauty invites people to fish, camp, hike, hunt, and boat.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gard, Robert E. The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names. Minocqua, Wis.: Heartland Press, 1988.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine, 1970.

Logan, Ben. The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People. Minnetonka, Minn.: Northword Press, 1999.

Thompson, William Fletcher, ed. The History of Wisconsin. 6 vols. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press, 1973–1998.

Wisconsin Blue Book. Madison: Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library, 1931–. Various publishers before 1931. Biennial since 1879.

Wisconsin Cartographers' Guild. Wisconsin's Past and Present: A Historical Atlas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Wisconsin Magazine of History. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press, 1917–.

Richard CarltonHaney

See alsoBlack Hawk War ; Dairy Industry ; French Frontier Forts ; Fur Trade and Trapping ; Lumber Industry ; Milwaukee ; Progressive Party, 1924 ; Sauk ; University of Wisconsin ; Wisconsin Idea .

Wisconsin , upper midwestern state of the United States. It is bounded by Lake Superior and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from which it is divided by the Menominee R. (N); Lake Michigan (E); Illinois (S); and Iowa and Minnesota (W), with the Mississippi R. forming much of that border.

Facts and Figures

Area, 56,154 sq mi (145,439 sq km). Pop. (2000) 5,363,675, a 9.6% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Madison. Largest city, Milwaukee. Statehood, May 29, 1848 (30th state). Highest pt., Timms Hill, 1,952 ft (595 m); lowest pt., Lake Michigan, 581 ft (177 m). Nickname, Badger State. Motto, Forward. State bird, robin. State flower, wood violet. State tree, sugar maple. Abbr., Wis.; WI

Geography

The most notable physiographic feature of the state is its profusion of lakes, over 8,500, ranging in size from Lake Winnebago (215 sq mi/557 sq km) to tiny glacial lakes of surprising beauty. The Wisconsin River, with its extensive dam system, runs generally southward through the middle of the state until it turns west (just NW of Madison) to flow into the Mississippi, dividing the state into eastern and western sectors. Running a parallel course just to the east, Wisconsin's major watershed extends in a broad arc from north to south; to the east the Menominee, the Peshtigo, the Wolf, and the Fox rivers flow E and NE into Lake Michigan, while to the west the Chippewa, the Flambeau, and the Black rivers make their way to the Mississippi.

Wisconsin's frontage on lakes Superior and Michigan as well as its many beautiful lakes and streams and its northern woodlands have made it a haven for hunters, fishermen, and water and winter sports enthusiasts. There are numerous state parks, forests, and two national forests. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Saint Croix and Lower Saint Croix national scenic rivers (see National Parks and Monuments , table) are also here. Madison is the capital and the second largest city; Milwaukee is the largest city. Green Bay and Racine are other major cities.

Economy

The rough isolation of Wisconsin's North Woods region is cut by part of the Gogebic range, from which much iron ore was extracted before 1965. Iron mining was resumed briefly in 1969 but has since stopped altogether. Sand and gravel, stone, and lime are other valuable mineral resources; zinc (as well as lead) is mined in the Driftless Area in the southwest. Important copper deposits were discovered in the north in the 1970s.

The state's greatest natural resource since its earliest days has been lumber. Dense forests (white pines in the north, hardwoods elsewhere) once covered all except the southern prairie. While reckless exploitation in the late 19th cent. drastically reduced the magnificent stands, extensive conservation and reforestation measures have saved the valuable lumber industry, and today c.40% of Wisconsin's land area is forested. The pulp, paper, and paper-products industrial complex in Green Bay and Appleton is one of the largest in the nation.

The state's accent, however, is chiefly pastoral. One of the nation's largest dairy herds grazes here, and Wisconsin is the leading state in the production of cheese as well as the second largest milk producer (after California). After dairy products and cattle, the state's most valuable farm commodities are corn and soybeans. Other important crops are hay, oats, potatoes, alfalfa, and a great variety of fruits and vegetables. Food processing, predictably, is one of the state's foremost industries, along with the manufacture of machinery, which is centered in Milwaukee, Madison, and Racine.

Other important manufactures are vehicles and transportation equipment, metal products, medical instruments and equipment, farm implements, and lumber. Almost all Wisconsin's major industries are to be found within metropolitan Milwaukee, where the traditional brewing and meatpacking are rivaled by the manufacture of heavy machinery and diesel and gasoline engines. Wisconsin has numerous ports on the Great Lakes capable of accommodating oceangoing vessels. The superb harbor at Superior (shared with Duluth, Minn.) has sizable shipyards and coal and ore docks that are among the nation's largest. Tourism and outdoor recreation are burgeoning, and several Native American groups operate gambling casinos in the state; through casino enterprises the Winnebago tribe has become one of the state's larger employers.

Government and Higher Education

Wisconsin still operates under its first constitution, adopted in 1848. Its executive branch is headed by a governor elected for a four-year term. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican, was elected governor in 1986 and reelected in 1990, 1994, and 1998. Lieutenant Governor Scott McCallum succeeded Thompson as governor in 2001 when the latter became U.S. secretary of health and human services. In 2002, Jim Doyle, a Democrat, was elected to the office; he was reelected in 2006. Republican Scott Walker was elected governor in 2010. Wisconsin's legislature has a senate with 33 members and an assembly with 99 members. The state elects two senators and eight representatives to the U.S. Congress and has ten electoral votes.

The extensive Univ. of Wisconsin has campuses at Madison (the main campus), Eau Claire, Green Bay, Kenosha, La Crosse, Menomonie, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Platteville, River Falls, Stevens Point, Superior, and Whitewater. Other notable institutions of higher learning are Beloit College, at Beloit; Lawrence Univ., at Appleton; Marquette Univ., at Milwaukee; and Ripon College, at Ripon.

History

French Fur Trading and the Influx of Eastern Tribes

The Great Lakes offered an easy access from Canada to the region that is now Wisconsin, and the Frenchman Jean Nicolet arrived at the site of Green Bay in 1634 in search of fur pelts and the Northwest Passage. He was followed by other traders and missionaries, among them Radisson and Groseilliers; Marquette and Joliet, who discovered the upper Mississippi; and Aco and Hennepin, from the party of La Salle.

Meanwhile the spread of settlers in the East was bringing the Ottawa, the Huron, and other Native American tribes into Wisconsin, where they in turn displaced the older inhabitants, the Winnebago, the Kickapoo, and others. Similarly, the Ojibwa drove their kinsmen the Sioux westward from Wisconsin. Only the Menominee remained relatively settled.

Nicolas Perrot helped (1667) establish Green Bay as the center of the Wisconsin fur trade, and in 1686 he formally claimed all the region for France. The fur trade flourished despite the 50-year war between the Fox and the French, and the historic Fox-Wisconsin portage was used by generations of traders from Green Bay and Prairie du Chien in their search for beaver and other furs.

British-American Struggles

Like all of New France, Wisconsin fell to the British with the end of the French and Indian Wars (1763). British traders mingled with the French and eventually gained the bulk of the fur trade. The British hold continued even after the end of the American Revolution, when the Old Northwest formally passed (1783) to the United States and was made (1787) a part of the Northwest Territory. After Jay's Treaty (1794), northwestern strongholds were turned over to the Americans, but the British continued to dominate the fur trade from the Canadian border. In the War of 1812 Wisconsin again fell into British hands. It was only with the Treaty of Ghent (see Ghent, Treaty of ) that effective U.S. territorial control began and that the American Fur Company gained control of much of the fur trade.

Settlement and Native American Resistance

Present-day Wisconsin was transferred from Illinois Territory to Michigan Territory in 1818. By then the fur trade was diminishing, but the lead mines in SW Wisconsin had long been active, and booming lead prices in the 1820s brought the first large rush of settlers. The region's great agricultural potential was also apparent, and after 1825 a considerable number of easterners began arriving via the new Erie Canal and the Great Lakes. They settled in the Milwaukee area and along the waterways. The U.S. army preserved order from key forts established at Green Bay (1816), Prairie du Chien (1816), and Portage (1828) and built bridges, trails, and roads throughout the region. The hostility of the Native Americans toward the incursions of aggressive settlers culminated in the Black Hawk War (1832). This revolt, brutally crushed, was the last Native American resistance of serious consequence in the area.

Territorial Status and Early Statehood

In 1836, Wisconsin was made a territory, and the legislators chose a compromise site for the capital, midway between the Milwaukee and western centers of population; thus the city of Madison was founded. By 1840 population in the territory had risen above 130,000, but the people, fearing higher taxes and stronger government, rejected propositions for statehood four times. In addition, politicians were at first unwilling to yield Wisconsin claims to a strip of land around Chicago and to what is now the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. However, hopes that statehood would bring improved communications and prosperity became dominant; the claims were yielded, and Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848. The state constitution provided protection for indebted farmers, limited the establishment of banks, and granted liberal suffrage. These measures and the state's rich soil attracted immigrants from Europe.

The influx of Germans to Wisconsin was especially heavy, and some parts of the state assumed the tidy semi-German look that has persisted along with an astonishing survival of the German language. Liberal leaders, like Carl Schurz, came after the failure of the Revolution of 1848 in Germany and added to the intellectual development of the state. Contributions were also made, then and later, by Irish, Scandinavians, Germans who had previously emigrated to the Volga region of Russia, and Poles.

The state's development was not always smooth. Although the state constitution provided for a system of free public schools, the principle was implemented only slowly. Similarly, the Univ. of Wisconsin (chartered 1848) was slow to assume importance. After a referendum (1852) ended the state constitutional ban on banking, farmers and many others mortgaged their property to buy railroad stocks, only to suffer distress when the state's railways went bankrupt in the Panic of 1857.

Late-Nineteenth-Century Political and Economic Developments

Wisconsin was steadily antislavery; the Free-Soil party gained a large following in the state (although the party's homestead plank and economic program were the major attractions). Wisconsin abolitionists played an important part in the formation of the Republican party. In the Civil War Wisconsin quickly rallied to the Union. Copperheads were few, but many War Democrats opposed the abridgment of civil liberties and other aspects of the war effort, and some of the German immigrants, who had left Germany because they opposed compulsory military service, opposed even voluntary war service.

The boom times brought by the war mitigated discontent, and economic and social growth was rapid during the 1860s and after. Railroads and other means of communication linked Wisconsin closely to the East. The meatpacking and brewing industries of Milwaukee began to assume importance in the 1860s. Wheat was briefly dominant especially in S Wisconsin, but was superseded in the 1870s as states further west became wheat producers and Wisconsin shifted to more diversified farming. Its great dairy industry developed, spurred by an influx of skilled dairy farmers from New York and Scandinavia and by the efforts of the Wisconsin Dairymen's Association (est. 1872). In these years the great pine forests of N Wisconsin began to be greatly exploited, and in the 1870s lumbering became the state's most important industry. Oshkosh and La Crosse flourished. With lumbering came large paper and wood products industries, and the opening of iron mines in Minnesota and Michigan promoted the N Great Lake ports and increased industrial opportunities.

Although hard hit in the panics of 1873 and 1898, Wisconsin was generally prosperous in the late 19th cent., and the reform-minded Granger movement and Populist party received less support than in other Midwestern states. A trend toward liberal political views was stimulated in Wisconsin by socialist thought, which was introduced early. Socialism, in a pragmatic and reformist rather than a doctrinaire form, dominated Milwaukee politics for many years and gave the city efficient government, particularly under the leadership of Victor Berger and Daniel Hoan. Stemming from a different source was the reform spirit of specialized and advanced Wisconsin farmers, who recognized the need for a more viable political and economic framework.

Robert La Follette and the Progressive Movement

In the early 20th cent., reform sentiment blossomed in the Progressive movement, under the tutelage of the Republican leader, Robert M. La Follette . This pragmatic attempt to achieve good effective government for all and to limit the excessive power of the few resulted in a direct primary law (1903), in legislation to regulate railroads and industry, in pure food acts, in high civil service standards, and in efforts toward cooperative nonpartisan action to solve labor problems. An important adjunct of progressivism was the "Wisconsin idea" —that of linking the facilities and brainpower of the Univ. of Wisconsin to progressive experiments and legislation. The plan owed much to Charles McCarthy and to the support of university president Charles Van Hise, and it brought such diverse benefits as the spread of scientific agricultural methods and the many labor and other bills drafted by Professor John R. Commons .

The progressive movement was temporarily halted by World War I. La Follette, some Socialists, and many German-Americans were critical of U.S. involvement in that war, but they were a distinct minority. Wisconsin was generally prosperous in the 1920s; industrialization made rapid strides, reforestation of the once great but now exhausted timberland was stimulated by state legislation, and the dairying industry continued to grow.

Wisconsin was alone in voting for its native son, La Follette, when he ran for president on the Progressive party ticket in 1924, and in the state his policies continued to be carried forward by his sons Robert M. La Follette, Jr., and Philip La Follette. Wisconsin's pioneer old-age pension act (1925) and its unemployment compensation act (1931) served as models for national social security a few years later. The Great Depression of the 1930s struck particularly hard in industrialized Milwaukee, but some relief was provided by the New Deal, and in addition Gov. Philip La Follette attempted, in his "little new deal," to improve agricultural marketing, promote electrification, and enforce fair labor practices.

World War II to the Present

During World War II, Wisconsin's shipbuilding industry flourished, and in the prosperous postwar era, urbanization and industrial growth continued; even in the nationwide slump of the late 1980s, the state's manufacturing sector proved resilient. Wisconsin politics continued to resonate on the national scene. U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy aroused controversy with his unsubstantiated anti-Communist campaign of the 1950s, but "McCarthyism" was balanced by other political strains in the state; thus Milwaukee, in the same period, again elected a Socialist mayor, and the Democratic party, long no match for Republican or Progressive forces, has gained strength in state elections since the late 1950s. In the 1990s the state was a pioneer in welfare reform.

Bibliography

See C. W. Rowe, The Effigy Mound Culture of Wisconsin (1956, repr. 1970); A. H. Robinson and J. B. Culver, ed., The Atlas of Wisconsin (1974); C. N. Current, Wisconsin: A History (1977); I. Vogeler, Wisconsin: A Geography (1986); R. C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (rev. ed. 1989); R. F. Fries, The History of Lumbering in Wisconsin (1989).

WISCONSIN

Appleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

Green Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583

Madison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595

Milwaukee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607

Racine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621

The State in Brief

Nickname: Badger State

Motto: Forward

Flower: Wood violet

Bird: Robin

Area: 65,498 square miles (2000; U.S. rank: 23rd)

Elevation: Ranges from 579 feet to 1,951 feet above sea level

Climate: Tempered by the Great Lakes, with winters more severe in the north and summers warmer in the south

Admitted to Union: May 29, 1848

Capital: Madison

Head Official: Governor Jim Doyle (D) (until 2007)

Population

1980: 4,706,000

1990: 4,891,769

2000: 5,363,675

2004 estimate: 5,509,026

Percent change, 1990–2000: 9.6%

U.S. rank in 2004: 20th

Percent of residents born in state: 73.4% (2000)

Density: 98.8 people per square mile (2000)

2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 176,987

Racial and Ethnic Characteristics (2000)

White: 4,769,857

Black or African American: 304,460

American Indian and Alaska Native: 47,228

Asian: 88,763

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 1,630

Hispanic or Latino (may be of any race): 192,921

Other: 84,842

Age Characteristics (2000)

Population under 5 years old: 342,340

Population 5 to 19 years old: 1,189,753

Percent of population 65 years and over: 13.1%

Median age: 36 years (2000)

Vital Statistics

Total number of births (2003): 69,963

Total number of deaths (2003): 46,194 (infant deaths, 451)

AIDS cases reported through 2003: 1,848

Economy

Major industries: Manufacturing; agriculture; finance, insurance, and real estate; wholesale and retail trade; services

Unemployment rate: 4.5% (April 2005)

Per capita income: $30,723 (2003; U.S. rank: 21)

Median household income: $46,782 (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Percentage of persons below poverty level: 8.8% (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Income tax rate: Ranges from 4.6% to 6.75% (tax year 2000)

Sales tax rate: 5.0%

Wisconsin State in n central USA, sw of the Great Lakes and e of the River Mississippi; the state capital is Madison. Milwaukee is the largest city. The land is rolling plain that slopes gradually down from the n. There are numerous glacial lakes. The French claimed the region in 1634, but Britain seized it in 1763, and it was ceded to the USA in 1783. Settlement of the region was slow. The Territory of Wisconsin was established in 1836. Wisconsin is the leading US producer of milk, butter, and cheese. The chief crops are hay, maize, oats, fruit, and vegetables. Wisconsin's most valuable resource is timber: 45% of the land is forested. Mineral deposits include zinc, lead, copper, iron, sand, and gravel. Industries: food processing, farm machinery, brewing, tourism. Area: 145,438sq km (56,154sq mi). Pop. (2000) 5,363,675.

Wisconsin, USA A state named after the river, and a lake. The French arrived in 1634 and retained control until ceding the area to the British at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763. British control was relinquished after the American War of Independence (1775–83) and in 1787 the area became part of the Northwest Territory; and of Indiana Territory in 1800. It became part of Wisconsin Territory, which included the present Iowa, Minnesota, and parts of the Dakotas, in 1836. It joined the Union in 1848 as the 30th state. The name is Chippewa for ‘Gathering (Place) of the Waters’.

Wisconsin river, c.430 mi (690 km) long, rising in the lake district, NE Wis., and flowing generally SW across central Wis. to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien. At Portage it is connected by a short canal with the Fox River, and thus with Lake Michigan. There are many hydroelectric power facilities on the river. The scenic Dells of the Wisconsin are a famous gorge.

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