Strohschiink and Thiel

construction, and that a large part of that workforce would have to be recruited,
with the commissioner's help, from among European emigrants.34
From the general tone of this committee report it may be inferred that
already after its first year there was a danger that the commissioner's office
might be abolished. Even as early as in his "First Annual Report of the
Commissioner of Emigration" of December 23, 1852, Gysbert Van Steenwijk,
the first commissioner to head the agency, anticipates this apprehension:
The giving up of our agency [...] would prove just at this period of a
very disasterous [sic] character and the results of our exertions might
be turned into a different channel, so as to make the benefits designed
for Wisconsin go to the State of Iowa.35
When reading the "Legislatur" column of the March 16, 1853, issue of the
Tlgliches Wisconsin-Banner, the ominous tone struck by both Van Steenwijk
and the select committee appears to be justified. After an apparently innocuous
introduction that castigates the legislators for their passivity of late and their
distracting manners, the reader stumbles on a bombshell:
[...], nur traf es gleich einem Blitze aus heiterer Luft die Bewerber ffir
die Emigrations-Agentur und die Freunde dieser MaBregel, daB der
Senat pldtzlich die Aufhebung derselben beschloB, obgleich er sich erst
am 10. d.M. mit achtzehn gegen sechs Stimmen ffir die Beibehaltung
der Agentur erkirt hatte.36
The editor surmises that the reason for such a sudden change of mind had
less to do with opposition to the agency as such than with the lawmakers'
displeasure with certain candidates for the Office of Commissioner. In any
event, the fickle senate must shortly later have again reverted itself. In what
way this body's possible aversion to certain candidates for commissioner may
34. "Report of the Select Committee to Whom Had Been Referred so much of the
Message of His Excellency the Governor as it Relates to the Subject of the Commissioner
Of Emigration," The Journal of the Senate of the State of Wisconsin, 1853, Appendix [with
respect to proposed legislation in 1853].
35. VSAR 11. Although the state of Iowa did not provide for a commissioner of immigration
until 1860, Van Steenwijk was no doubt aware of Iowa Governor Hempstead's first biennial
message of 1852 in which he encouraged, unsuccessfully as it turned out, the appointment
of a commissioner of emigration. Cf. Marcus Lee Hansen, "Official Encouragement of

Immigration to Iowa,"164.
36. [...], however, it hit supporters and friends of the emigration agency like a bolt out of the
blue that the senate all of a sudden decided to terminate the same, despite the fact that only on
March 10 it had decreed the continuation of the agency by a vote of 18 to 6.

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