feed the livestock used in the lumber camps were
salable there. When oxen were required for work in
the woods, farmers owning oxen and farmhands could
work in the timber camps in the winter. Farming in
the areas of large lumber operations had advantages.
    A writer commented in the Barron County his-
tory that:
   With the coming of winter, the men-folk, even those who
eventually intended to make a living by farming, made for
the woods, with the oldest boys. Those who had horses, or
mules, or oxen, were fortunate, for these they could also take
into the woods as a source of profit.
   Dreary indeed was the lot of the devoted mothers left
with the children in the lonely cabins. Wild beasts ranged
the woods, Indians were sometimes in the neighborhood,
neighbors were far away, letters and reading matter were a
rare treat. There were chores to do, the animals to look after,
the household tasks to perform. Often provisions ran low,
sometimes illness and even death stalked across the humble
threshold.
    In addition to the other duties, many of the women, espe-
cially those from the European countries, spent their extra
time in carding, spinning and knitting. The cherished posses-
sion of many such families is now a spinning wheel brought
far across the seas, and upon which some devoted mother
spun as she dreamed dreams of a future in which she and the
husband should have attained prosperity and comfort, and
when the children should have grown to adult years, an honor
and comfort to their parents, and happy in the possession of
the comforts and opportunities of which she and her husband
were denying themselves. The yarn being spun, it was knit
into mittens, socks and even jackets to supplement the
meagre supply of clothing.
    In some of the neighborhoods there were schools which
the children could attend part of the year. They were of the
crudest kind, usually with hand-hewed benches. But for a
number of years the more isolated children received only such
instruction as their mothers could give them.
    Happy indeed were the mothers, when some traveling
minister or priest came along, held a meeting or mass at their
home, baptized the children, and gave them Bible or catechism
instruction. Some of the pleasantest memories of many of the
older people now in the county is that the first meetings of
the congregation in their neighborhood were held in their
humble cabins.
    For a number of years but little was raised on the little
 clearings except the food needed by the family. This was
 supplemented by wild game and such staple provisions as
 could be purchased at the far away stores out of the slender
 family funds. Wheat and corn were taken to distant mills
 and ground into flour. Meat was dried and cured in the back
 yards, or hung up preserved by the intense cold.
    As acreage of the clearings was increased, a little sur-


plus, especially of rutaoagas, nay, oats ana meat coula be
sold to the lumber company.
    There was but little cash in all the country. The lumber
companies paid for the most part in script and orders good at
a company store.
    Expansion of business and industry and just the
basic needs of housing all the newcomers to the Mis-
sissippi Basin caused a lumber boom. After the Civil
War the great white pines of northern Wisconsin


True enough, sometimes the vegetables were larger than life.

brought premium prices. Logging camps mush-
roomed throughout the forest country. Wisconsin
became the leading lumber state in the nation. Into
the "cutover frontier" Wisconsin's farms gradually
crept northward.
     It took thirty years for the counties in the mid-
dle north to convert to agriculture. It took much
longer for the counties in the far north. The great
stands of white pine had been largely exhausted by
1915. For more than seventy-five years Wisconsin
furnished white pine for the new dwellings and towns
of the new western country.
     Dean Henry wrote and published a pamphlet
in 1896, "Northern Wisconsin, a Handbook for the
Homeseeker." He personally led a commission
through the north, and he had much influence in the
settlement and making of farms in northern Wis-
consin.
     By 1900 a land settlement for northern Wiscon-
sin got into gear, with speculators and land agents
promoting cheap cutover land for farms. The agents
promised rose-garden dreams of cheap land and crops
of plenty.
     Early lumbermen in northern Wisconsin were
actually often reluctant to sell their cutover lands.
"So long as we have outstanding pine in any consid-
erable quantities in a county," said one lumber king,
"we want the settler to keep out, for as soon as the
farmer appears he wants schools, roads, and other
improvements for which we, the owners, must pay
increased taxes."
     Timber companies that logged off the forest
lands of Wisconsin thought so little of the land itself
that they often did not retain title after taking the


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