in football terms. Folks in Wisconsin used to know
that the Green Bay Packers talked a great deal about
pride. It was pride, they said, that made the Pack-
ers the kind of team it was in the Lombardi days.
Certainly the one thing that all the Swedish, Nor-
wegian, German, the other ethnic groups and old
American families in that part of Wisconsin had was
pride. They wanted to prove to the world that they
could make their own way without help from outside
agencies.
    And this attitude led to faith in themselves and
faith in the land. Faith in the rural areas is still
very strong. The urge to have an education, to
struggle for it, not just have it handed over free, is
still there. And there is pride, too, because the farms
in Wisconsin are still family ones, and the same
family values operate there. The farms are bigger,
and there aren't nearly so many of them. The whole
family may not be involved in the operation because
it simply takes a lot less manpower than it used to.
In 1830, to produce one bushel of wheat by hand took
more than 255 minutes. Today, with a four-wheel
drive tractor and combine, it takes one-half minute.
    Remember that it was the land that originally
drew the people to Wisconsin. People left Europe
because they had no opportunity to own land. They
came to have their own place. They lived through


the pioneer struggle, they attained education for
their children, and finally they became better off and
were able to buy machinery and to put up silos and
have superior cattle. They created the farm state
we have today.
     The farm family is what made Wisconsin a
friendly, neighborly, tradition-conscious state. The
family is the important thing about Wisconsin, far
more important than the cow, or nutrition, or ani-
mal husbandry or agronomy. The meaning of this
book lies in the kind of people who came to Wiscon-
sin, and in their families. They played together and
worked together and evolved a whole social struc-
ture. They arranged social gatherings to help one
another in the harvest, to raise barns, and to sup-
port one another in times of illness, death, and dis-
aster. Many a farm today is in the hands of its
Depression-day owners because the neighbors came
to the 1930s auction and "bid in" the farm for a
dollar ... and dared the local authorities to say oth-
erwise. The folkish proverbs by which our forefath-
ers sowed and reaped, the songs they sang, the re-
ligions they practiced-all are a part of the Wiscon-
sin way of living, and of the spirit of this state. In
many families these traditions have been passed
down generation by generation.
     Certainly one of the wonderful aspects of the


In the kaleidoscope of the present, the old contrasts wtin me new.


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