Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 69, number 4, summer, 1986

              nesbit: making a living IN WISCONSIN, 1873—1893
Bill Hooker recalled farmers bringing pro¬ duce to Milwaukee to sell in the markets or to merchants. Many brought hay and grain to provender urban horses and cows, while their wives brought dried apples on strings, berries, butter, eggs, and other items to trade at the grocers' for staples. Dried stockfish, hard as hint, was another standard item, displayed in piles like kindling. "Once in a while a farmer would fetch into some regular customer a dressed hog or a barrel of apples or a sack of potatoes and undersell the grctcer. Besides, he got ready money, which was hard to get from a dealer." William Brockman's family bought potatoes in this manner, a sixty-pound bag for thirty-five or forty cents. Twenty-five bags represented a normal purchase, "and [we] put them down in the basement. . . . Of course we didn't have heat all over the house."'''
One aspect of making a living that deserves mention was the absence of leisure time for most wage earners, except that conferred by periods of unemployment. Gardening and gathering fell largely to other members of the family. Boys learned the value of stray bits of fuel that seemed of doubtful ownership or of an occasional dime that ingenuity might pro¬ duce. Fishing served more than the instinct for sport. Bill Hooker recalled catching crayfish in the Kinnickinnic marsh and selling them to German saloonkeepers, who served them to their customers. (By courtesy, they were called "crab.") The growth of the tan¬ neries, packing plants, and coal docks in Menominee Valley had put an end to crayfish¬ ing and similar pursuits by the eighties.''
Most industrial workers commonly worked a ten-hour day, six days a week. But a book¬ keeper in Marinette lamented that while his employers were considerate men, they were
of Cities, Volume XIX, Part 2, p. 672; Howard, "Home Life in Milwaukee," 27; Bill Hoolcer, Glimpses of an Earlier Mil¬ waukee (Milwaukee, 1929), 10-11; Brockman Transcript, Matson Holbrook Interviews.
"•Hooker, An Earlier Milwaukee, 9-10; Brockman Transcript, Matson Holbrook Interviews.
' 'Hooker, An Earlier Milwaukee, 13.
forced to conform to the hours of competing merchants. He put in sixteen-hour days and knew others who worked a half-day on Sun¬ day in addition. Teamsters employed as de- liverymen worked a similar schedule. In many working-class households the breadwinner was a tired boarder or even just an occasional presence. A machinist from Wausau com¬ plained that he had not been home, except for visits, for two years. He owned a home there, but had had to look elsewhere for work at his higher-paying trade: "I can not move my fam¬ ily because I do not know how long work will last." This speaks volumes about the quality of life for many of Wisconsin's wage earners.'^
There are many figures available to provide a general picture of tfie average working-class urban family. There simply is no such mea¬ sure for farm families because there was no la¬ bor market mechanism at work and the re¬ turns were so variable. And the uncertainty of employment did not impinge upon the farmer. The opportunity to turn his hand to useful labor, for his own henefit and at his own command, was of inestimable value. Privately the farmer may have envied the successful en¬ trepreneur, banker, professional, or man of commerce, but not the marginal village tradesman waiting for a customer or the un¬ skilled worker waiting to be hired. The won¬ der is that the city or the small town was as¬ sumed to act as such a lure. But farm life presented such a dull routine, and so many people in town appeared to lead interesting, well-rewarded lives. They even had time for other things than work.
For the ambitious who felt that they were equipped for better things, the years after 1873 opened many avenues, especially by way of some formal education beyond the district school. The complexities of an interdepen¬ dent, industrialized society were opening new opportunities for many people—a minority, to be sure, but a growing minority.
'"Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, Biennial Report, 1887-1888, pp. 27, 80.
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