The Development of Chicago and Vicinity as a Manufacturing Center prior to 1880

Front matter

HE DEVELOPMENT OF CHICAGO AND VICINITY AS A MANUFACTURING CENTER PRIOR TO 1880

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE) FACULTY • \;i -\ OF THE)

Introduction

In no phase of its economic development has the United States made greater progress during the last half of the nineteenth century than in manufacturing; and, in the growth of that industry, one of the most conspicuous facts is the increased proportion of manufactures produced west of the Atlantic States. During this half century the center of manufactures in the United States moved westward from a point forty-one miles northwest of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to a point near Mansfield, Ohio, a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles. As a part of this movement, welldefined manufacturing centers arose in the Mississippi Valley, with one of which we are chiefly concerned.

In the year 1900 the strip of territory on the western shore of Lake Michigan, comprising the counties of Cook and Lake, in Illinois, and Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, contained an area of 2,281 square miles and a population of 2,270,607. Near its northern limits was situated the city of Milwaukee, with a population of 285,315; near its southern limits, eighty-five miles from Milwaukee, was the city of Chicago, with a population of 1,698,575. Between these lay the less important cities of Waukegan, Kenosha, and Racine, with a total population of 50,134, and numerous smaller towns. In this territory nearly eighteen per cent, of the population were engaged in manufacturing, employing during the year ending June 1, 1900, a capital of $696,217,768 and turning out manufactured products valued at $1,079,185,631. Although this territory contained but three per cent of the total population of the United States, and less than seven hundredths of one per cent of its area, it employed seven per cent of the total capital engaged in manufacturing in the United States and produced eight per cent of the total value of our manufactured output. It is to this territory that I have applied the term "Chicago and Vicinity," and to seek from its history the answer to the questions how and why it became so great a manufacturing center is the purpose of this dissertation.

This purpose cannot be accomplished by a study of events within the territory alone. The growth of any manufacturing center is dependent in a large degree upon the development of regions that furnish raw materials for its manufacture, and provide a market for its products. These regions may be distinct and separate, or they may be one and the same. Broadly speaking, the agricultural territory in the United States westward and southwestward from Lake Michigan, together with the coal and iron fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, and Northern Michigan, and the timbered regions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and the states south of the Ohio River, have become the territory from which Chicago and Vicinity obtains the raw materials for its manufactures ; while the whole United States and much of the civilized world have become its marketplace. Thus, the development of Chicago and Vicinity has been so interwoven with, and so dependent upon, the development of its surrounding territory that no adequate conception of the one can be obtained without a somewhat comprehensive study of the other. In other words, it will be necessary to examine the resources and trace the development of this tributary territory, in so far as they effect the growth of manufactures in Chicago and Vicinity, as to examine the actual development of those manufactures themselves. And, as the development of the tributary territory has, in a measure, necessarily preceded the growth of manufactures in the center, the consideration of the tributary territory will naturally be made first.

The scope of this dissertation will be limited to the years preceding 1880. Although Chicago and Vicinity has made its most rapid progress and has achieved the greater part of its reputation as a manufacturing center since that date, the period prior to 1880 contains not only the beginnings but the primary causes, we beileve, of all subsequent development.

Chapter I. Chicago And Vicinity Prior To 1830

Among the things essential to the development of a large manufacturing center are contiguity of raw materials, or cheap means of transporting them from the source of supply to the factories ; extensive water power, or cheap fuel for the generation of steam or electricity ; cheap, rapid, and reliable means for distributing the manufactured products among the consumers ; a requisite supply of effective labor ; a climate favorable to the health and vigorous, uninterrupted employment of the laborer ; and abundant capital available for investment in manufacturing.

Some of these requisites, such as contiguity of raw materials, water power, fuel, natural means of transportation, and favorable climate, not being dependent primarily upon the settlement of the tributary territory, may be considered with reference to Chicago and Vicinity prior to 1830.

Reference to a map of the United States will indicate the location of this region with respect to its natural resources, means of transportation and markets. To the east lies a continuous waterway 1800 miles long through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean, or through the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal, 1,665 miles, to New York and the Atlantic. To the north is Lake Superior, affording water transportation for a wide region whose resources will be discussed later. To the south and west stretches one vast plain, nine hundred miles to the Gulf of Mexico and nearly one thousand miles to the Rocky Mountains, in which flow ten thousand miles of water navigable to steamboats.1

But Chicago and Vicinity is also fortunately located with reference to timber, coal, clay, stone, lead and iron. Before the pioneer's axe laid waste her forests, the present state of Michigan contained 38,000 square miles of woodland, which was sixty-seven per cent of the entire area of the state.2 The upper peninsula and the northern half of the lower peninsula were covered originally with heavy forests of conifers, consisting mainly of white pine. Southward in the lower peninsula various hard-woods were found. The pine belt was hunt's Merch. Mag., Vol. VIII, p. 327. 212th IJ. S. Census, Vol. IX, p. 842.

practically embraced in the country lying north of a line drawn from the head of Lake St. Clair on the east to South Haven on the west.3 In 1880 the stand of white pine in Michigan was officially estimated at thirty-five billion feet.4 The St. Joseph, Grand, Muskegon, and other rivers, with Lake Michigan, afforded easy and cheap transportation for the lumber from these forests to Chicago and Vicinity. The northern portion of the territory now comprised in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota was likewise covered with white pine. It is estimated that Wisconsin contained 31,750 square miles of woodland, comprising fifty-eight per cent of the area of the state ; and Minnesota, 52,200 square miles, comprising sixty-six per cent of the area of the state.5 The southern portion of the timber belt in Wisconsin contained much hard-wood. Only the timbered area in Wisconsin near the shore of Lake Michigan was tributary to Chicago and Vicinity prior to the building of railroads. But the supply in Michigan was ample for many years. The importance of this easy access to lumber will be made evident in our later discussion of the actual development of the lake shore6 and its tributary territory.

Since the application of steam power in manufacturing has become so universal, the importance of an abundant and cheap supply of coal for fuel is fully apparent. Chicago and Vicinity has direct connection by water with the great anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. It is only about three hundred sixty miles, on the average, from the coal fields of Ohio, one hundred twenty to one hundred forty miles from the coal fields of Indiana, and only sixty miles from the inexhaustible fields of Illinois.7 The Illinois coal field embraces about two-thirds of Illinois and parts of Kentucky and Indiana. It is computed to contain about sixty-two thousand square miles and the combined thickness of all the workable seams is about eighteen feet.8 This Illinois coal is of the bituminous variety and contains from forty-eight to sixty-two per cent of fixed carbon,9 making it a very usable coal for all ordinary fuel purposes.

Brick clay and building stone in abundance are in easy reach of

3Industrial Chicago, III, p. 28. *12th U. S. Census, Vol. IX, p. 842. 512th U. S. Census, Vol. IX, p. 842.

6By "lake shore" here we mean the region which we have chosen to call Chicago

and Vicinity. This term will be frequently used in the future pages. 7Chicago Board of Trade Report, 1875. App., pp. 221-230. 8Lake Side Monthly, Vol. III. p. 198.

8"Memorial of Chicago to the Government of U. S. for a Foundry and Armory," Nov. 1, 1861, p. 17 et seq.

the lake shore. In fact, Milwaukee has become known as "The Cream City" from the large use of cream colored brick made in its vicinity,30 and the greatest lime-stone quarries in the United States are to be found at Joliet,11 forty miles souhtwest of Chicago.

Another natural resource which has contributed much, though rather indirectly, to the building up of Chicago and Vicinity is the lead deposits in the Upper Mississippi lead region. This lead region occupies an extensive area in the three states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, in the vicinity of Galena, Illinois. The whole area over which lead has been raised, in sufficient quantity to be worthy of notice, is about 4,000 square miles, of which nearly two-thirds is in Wisconsin and the other third about equally divided between Illinois and Iowa.12

On the southern shore of Lake Superior, only one hundred and fifty miles noth of the manufacturing center whose development we propose to study, lie the famous Lake Superior copper and iron fields. It is sufficient at this point to say that these have become the greatest iron producing and the second greatest copper producing fields in the United States.13

From the foregoing pages it will readily be seen that Chicago and Vicinity is very favorably situated with reference to many of the chief natural resources or raw materials which are indispensable in the building up of great manufacturing industries; that it is, indeed, the natural meeting point of all these materials — a fact which, ultimately at least, must have a very large influence upon its history. But in the actual development of the lake shore during the period of which this chapter is to treat, other elements were more potent. In fact, by the year 1830, actual manufacturing (in Chicago and Vicinity) had scarcely begun. Yet a proper appreciation of the events prior to 1830 is indispensable to a correct understanding of the development of manufacturing in this district after 1830. Every new country must attain a certain degree of development, must have a considerable population which has solved the more pressing problem of obtaining an adequate food supply, before any portion of it can engage extensively in manufacturing. It is the history of this primitive development, so important in its effects upon the later

10Barton : "Industrial History of Milwaukee,'' p. 5 et seq. nNew International Encyclopedia, Vol. X, p. 475. "Geological Survey of Illinois, Vol. I, pp. 155-157. 13U. S. Census, 1900, Vol. on Mines and Quarries, pp. 403, 482.

growth of manufacturing, that confronts us in our study of the lake shore and its tributary territory prior to 1830. To this we now turn.

From the close of the fifteenth century, when Columbus dispelled men's fears of ocean navigation, to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the steam railway proved its practicability, water afforded commerce its chief highway, and land was its chief barrier. The truth and significance of this may be seen in the early location of cities in the United States. Largely dependent upon the rivers for means of travel, early immigration may be traced, in general, by the river courses. Along these routes of travel, at portages between the streams or at points convenient for reaching the interior, the trading-post and town grew up. From these as centers, population spread over the surrounding land and reacted upon the trading-posts, frequently building them into thriving cities of trade. Such is the explanation of the American sea-board cities, such is the explanation of St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, and such is the explanation of Chicago and Vicinity's settlement and growth.

Recent development in means of travel makes it difficult now to realize how hampered were American emigrants in their movement from east to west during the closing decades of the eighteenth and the opening decades of the nineteenth centuries. For means of conveyance they knew only the pack-train, the wagon, the river craft, and the dep-sea sailing ship. Travel by pack-train or wagon was slow, expensive, and difficult. West of the Appalachian Mountains there were no roads in this "untouched wilderness" and savages haunted the way. The sea route was indirect and long. But the rivers marked a route for the immigrant and offered to carry his craft loaded with his family and goods. Thus the rivers became to him of great importance.11

From the far east the population moved westward along four main lines: (1) Through Central New York following the valley of the Mohawk River; (2) across southern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and northern Virginia, parallel to and along the course of the Upper Potomac River; (3) southward through the valleys of Virginia and through the mountain gaps into Tennessee and Ken-

"House Ex. Doc, 50th Congress, 1st Session, No. 6, Part II, p. 190.

tucky; (4) around the southern end of the mountains through Georgia and Alabama.15

It is evident that the movements of population by the last two of these routes could affect the settlement of Chicago and Vicinity's tributary territory but little except by peopling Tennessee and Kentucky, from where new waves of migration might move northwestward and cross the Ohio.

The first of these four main routes led in the direction of the Great Lakes. It is important for our study of Chicago and Vicinity to notice that this was not early a popular route. Some of the main causes of the early discovery and exploration of the region of the Upper Lakes actually hindered its further development. For instance, the roving disposition of the French, together with the wealth of the lake region in fur-bearing animals, brought discovery, exploration, and a feeble colonial life, but little else. Up to the close of the Revolutionary war the English held Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac, and their garrisons would have turned back adventurous immigrants.16 Until the introduction of the steamboat on the Lakes in 1818, men were not so ready to embark upon the lakes as upon a river, such as the Ohio, where sheltering banks were near and where a current furnished motive power for the transportation of the settler's goods.

Another reason for the slow march of the immigrant by the northern route is found in the fact that Western New York and Northern Maine and Vermont remained sparsely inhabited long after Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania were fully settled and emigrants were moving past these regions to the Upper Ohio.17 The sparsely settled sections in Maine, Vermont, and New York, still afforded cheap land for the emigrant nearer home. As late as 1796, so poor were the direct routes of travel through Western New York that the surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company preferred to reach Lake Erie by way of the Wood Creek portage, Lake Ontario, and the Niagara portage.18

The second, or Ohio River, route was far more accessible. In

"Hinsdale: The Old Northwest, p. 282; 10th Census of U. S., Vol. XIII. Turner:

Rise of the New West, pp. 80-82. 16The American flag was raised over Detroit for the first time July 11, 1796

(Cooley, Michigan, p. 118). Terms of Jay's Treaty 1796 brought surrender

of all British posts.

17Hinsdale: Old Northwest, p. 329; also Roosevelt: Winning of the West, III, p. 47.

18Hinsdale: Old Northwest, page 282.

the French and Indian war two practicable roads were built which crossed the mountains and connected the Atlantic Coast with the Upper Ohio, — one, the Braddock road, cut through the Upper Potomac in 1755, with its eastern terminus at Alexandria; the other the Forbes Road, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by way of Lancaster and Bedford, was built in 1758.19 These roads, together with the Allegheny River and the Catskill turnpike, spread out like so many arms to gather all the travel from Eastern and Southern New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Northern Virginia and concentrate it at the head waters of the Ohio. Upon reaching that point the emigrant usually placed his belongings upon a flat-boat, or later upon a steamboat, and floated down the river to the point nearest his destination.

The reasons for the popularity of this route may be found in the comparatively numerous and easily traveled roads that were early opened from the populous sections in the East to the Ohio, the length of that water highway whose friendly current bore the settler onward with such facility toward his future home, the mildness of its climate when compared with the northern route, the superior fertility of the soil of Southern when compared with Northern Ohio,20 and the fact that its course lay in the direction of the islands of population that had been formed in the Kentucky and Tennessee region during the last half of the eighteenth century by emigrants from Southern Virginia and the Carolinas. The effect of this popularity of the Ohio River route may be seen in the three accompanying maps illustrating the distribution of population in the United States west of Pennsylvania and north of Tennessee in the years 1810, 1820, and 1830.21

By 1810 population had spread down the Ohio River covering the eastern and southern halves of the state of Ohio, joining Pennsylvania with Kentucky by a wide band of territory varying in density of population from two to eighten per square mile. The same movement had extended farther along the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi and up that river to the mouth of the Missouri, where was gathered a population of from six to eighteen per square mile. At the same time and to the same density, emigrants had

"■Hinsdale: Old Northwest, p. 282.

^Hunt's Merch. Mag., Vol. IX, p. 36 et seq. Thwaites : Early Western Travels,

Vol. IX, p. 82 et seq. ^Statistical Atlas, 12th U. S. Census, plates 4, 5, 6.

pushed their way up the Wabash River beyond its junction with the White. At the western extremity of Lake Erie was a small area with a population of from two to six per square mile. Small islands of populations of from two to six inhabitants per square mile were to be found at Saginaw, Sault Ste. Marie, Green Bay, and Prairie du Chien, where a few white settlers had gathered around the Indian trading posts. The remainder of the Old Northwest still remained in the possession of the Indian tribes and a scattered white population of less than two to the square mile.

By 1820 population had pushed farther up the tributaries of the Ohio. The southern belt across the state of Ohio had increased in density of population until it contained from eighteen to forty-five per square mile, while a considerable area had appeared in the southwestern corner of the state surrounding the city of Cincinnati and having a population of from forty-five to ninety per square mile. Thus early had Cincinnati, a stern rival of the future Chicago, gained for herself a densely populated tributary territory and become the "Queen City of the West." The entire Lake Erie shore had now been settled with a population exceeding two to the square mile. Only the northwest corner of the state, containing perhaps one-sixth of its area, remained unsettled or having a population of less than two per square mile. During the period from 1810 to 1820 Ohio had increased in population twelve-fold.22 The southern portions of Indiana and Illinois had been settled with sufficient population to enable them to be admitted into the Union as States in 1816 and 1818 respectively. The wave of immigration had pushed up the Missouri River to the center of the present state of Missouri and north along the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri River to the Fabius River. Little change had come to the remainder of the "Old Northwest." Outside of the Indian trading-posts already conspicuous in 1810, the remainder of the territory contained a white population of less than two persons to the square mile and remained in the possession of the various Indian tribes.

The map indicating the distribution of population in 1830 shows that the progress of emigration to the West was still down the Ohio River, then up its tributaries, or from the Mississippi up its tributaries, approaching the western shore of Lake Michigan from the south. By 1830 Illinois had a population of 157,447, but nearly all

22Hinsdale: Old Northwest, page 329.

the northern third of the state was inhabited by a white population of less than two persons to the square mile. The northern fourth of Indiana had no denser population. The inhabited area in the region of Detroit had considerably enlarged and an area on the St. Joseph River near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan had acquired a population of from two to six persons per square mile. This spread of population in Southern Michigan, with the still large uninhabited area between Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron and Lake Erie on the east, indicated that the settlement of Chicago and Vicinity or its immediate tributary territory could not yet be expected from the East by the Lake route.

By 1830, however, the beginnings of a settlement which was destined to have a large influence upon the development of Chicago and Vicinity was visible in the northwestern corner of the state of Illinois and in the southwestern corner of what later became the state of Wisconsin. This was the Upper Mississippi, or Galena, Lead District. The Indians seem to have informed the French of the lead deposits in this region as early as 1658-'59, and Hennepin's map of 1S67 has a lead mine located in the vicinity of the present city of Galena.23 But the mines were little developed by the French or Indians, and little was done in the region by Americans until after 1820. In 1816 John Shaw claims to have taken the first boatload of lead from Galena.24 He took it to St. Louis in payment for goods that the traders of the Galena section had purchased. By 1820 St. Louis had a population of 4,928 and was then able with its stock of merchandise to meet the demands of the Galena region. The result of this growth of St. Louis was that between 1815 and 1820 the channel of the Indian trade had, in a large measure, changed from Mackinaw, where it had so long continued, to St. Louis, which was far more accessible.25

The development of this Upper Mississippi Lead Region, the extent and location of which has been stated above, had such a large effect upon the future development of Chicago and Vicinity that it is worthy of our somewhat detailed study. The development of the mines was sporadic and desultory until about 1822 when Colonel James Johnson, having obtained a government license, under strong military protection from the Indians, began

23Thwaites: Notes on Early Lead Mining, Wis. Hist. Coll., XIII, p. 272.

24Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. II, p. 229.

25Ibid.

operations with a large force of laborers and good tools. About two years previously the Indians had discovered very valuable leads near Galena, one nugget alone being so large as to require the efforts of their entire band to raise it. "At once there flocked thither a horde of squatters and prospectors from Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee; while many came from Southern Illinois."26 In 1826 the excitement relative to the Lead Mine country considerably increased, and in 1827 it is said to have been intense, "equaling almost anything pertaining to the California gold fever. People from almost all portions of the Union inconsiderately rushed to the mining region."27 The population of the lead region increased from two hundred in 1825 to ten thousand in 1828, and the amount of lead produced during the same period increased nearly thirty-fold.28 Although the lead region drew to itself a large population during the decade, the surrounding country remained very sparsely settled. A traveler of 1821 reports that, during a trip made by canoe from Green Bay via the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to St. Louis, he saw but seven white men outside the forts.29 He returned by way of the Illinois River, and from its mouth to Ft. Clarke, where Peoria now is, he saw but one house and had great difficulty in securing provisions of any kind.30 In 1822, when Galena consisted of two log cabins, Springfield, the present capital of Illinois contained but four or five houses.31 In 1828 Ebenezer Brigham settled at Blue Mounds, some twenty-four miles west of the present capital of Wisconsin, and the most advanced outpost in the mines. "The nearest settler was at what is now Dodgeville, about twenty-four miles distant. On the southeast the nearest house was on the O'Plaine [Des Plaines] River, twelve miles west of Chicago. On the east, Solomon Juneau was his nearest neighbor, at the mouth of the Milwaukee River ; and on the northeast Green Bay was the nearest settlement."32 So sparsely settled was the region east of

20Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. XIII, p. 290.

37Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. II, p. 328.

28Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. XI, p. 400.

Estimated population: 1825 200; 1826 1,000

Amount lead produced : 1825 439,473 pounds

29Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. IV, p. 162.

30Ihid.

31Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. I. p. 94 et seq. 32Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. I, p. 94, et seq.

the Mississippi and north of Alton that in 1827 the United States government sent its agent all the way from Green Bay to St. Louis to buy cattle to provide beef for the garrison at Green Bay. In the neighborhood of Carrollton, Illinois, after six weeks of effort, he succeeded in purchasing two hundred sixty-two head which he drove across the country to Green Bay, killing four upon the way for food.33

In 1830 the northern half of Illinois had a population of 33,852, against 122,732 in the southern half.34 Within the present limits of the state of Wisconsin there was a white population of about 3,433. 35 Of this number, 474 were members of the garrisons at Fort Howard and Fort Winnebago, and four companies were stationed at Fort Crawford in 1827. Thus, in 1830 the regular inhabitants of what is now Wisconsin were something less than 3,000. 1,587 of these were in the lead district in the southwest corner of the territory, and the remaining population was, in the main, gathered about the forts.36 From the sparseness of the populations in northern Illinois and in all of what is now Wisconsin, and from the fact that large portions of the distirct were still occupied by the Pottawatomie, Sac and Fox, and the Winnebago and Menomonee Indians, as indicated upon the map for the year 1830, it is evident that the produce of this region, aside from lead and furs, was very small. Its influence upon Chicago and Vicinity, either in furnishing materials for exports or demand for imports, could not have been large.

We are now ready to inquire more directly into the development of Chicago and Vicinity itself prior to the year 1830. We have already seen something of the disadvantages of emigration by way of the northern Lake route. We have seen how population rapidly extended westward down the Ohio, northward along its tributaries, up the Mississippi and its branches, and, from the southwest and west, was now approaching the western shore of Lake Michigan. It must not be thought that there was no emigration moving westward along the Lake route, nor that it all was absorbed by the unsettled areas in Western New York, Northern Ohio, or Eastern

S3Wis. Hist. Coll., Vol. IV, p. 168 et seq. 34Hunt's Merch. Mag., Vol. IX, p. 36.

^Exee. Docs.. 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., Vol. VI, No. 263; Wis. Hist. Coll., XIII, p. 469. For Brown Co., I have taken figures of last reference. I have omitted the entire population for Michilimackinaw Co., since the portion in the present limits of Wis. was .scarcelv inhabited in 1830.

86Wis. Hist. Coll.. Vol. XI, p. 362, note.

Michigan. By the beginning of the eigtheenth century, missionary zeal and the importance of the fur trade had caused the establishment of stations at Detroit (founded in 1701), Sault Ste. Marie, and Michilimackinac. From these points as centers, a trade with the Indians grew up and a transient population was thus called in. During the century other points farther removed into the Indian country were established. Prominent among these were Green Bay,37 at the head of the bay by that name, and Prairie du Chien38 upon the Mississippi River about six miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin River. As the trade increased and extended, other posts were established from which the voyageurs could obtain their supplies. These in turn drew from the older and larger posts, such as Michilimackinac which remained the chief depot of supplies for all the Indian trade west of it until between 1815 and 1820, when it was superseded by St. Louis.39 Such were the considerations that led also to the settlement of the lake shore district which we have called "Chicago and Vicinity."

Prior to 1830 there were but two settlements upon the lake shore — one at the present site of Milwaukee, and one at Chicago. The former may be dismissed with few words. What is believed to be the earliest mention of Milwaukee is found in Gorrell's Journal under date of August 21st, 1762, and the indications are that it was then a considerable Indian village.40 Whether it be true or not that there was an Indian village at this point in so early a day, it is certain that the vicinity was occupied by Indian tribes.41 Being at the junction of the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic rivers and very near the shore of Lake Michigan, the location was an advantageous one from which to trade with the Indians. This was early recognized and became the lodestone which attracted the first settlers to Milwaukee. There have been several so-called "first" traders at Milwaukee,42 and the honor of being the first permanent white settler is in dispute.43 But whoever the first permanent white