Milwaukee

the largest city of Wisconsin. The name is Indian. Authorities are uncertain whether it means "Good Land" or "Council Place." The city is situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Milwaukee and Menominee rivers. It is an important lake port and has an excellent harbor with over twenty miles of dockage. Railroads center here. The city is noted for the exportation of grain and flour. Enormous elevators and flouring mills have been built. Pork packing is an important industry. The city obtains a supply of lumber, coal, iron, and copper for manufacturing purposes by way of the lake. Machinery, clothing, leather, and beer are the chief manufactures.

The site of the future city was visited by various traders and frontiersmen. The first white man is believed to have been a companion of La Salle in 1679. The cabin of the first settler was erected in 1818. The village was organized in 1837. For half a century Milwaukee was practically a German city. Most of the newspapers were published in the German language. Entertainments were presented by German companies to German audiences. The German language was made a part of the daily instruction in the schools. German still receives attention, and there are still newspapers published in German, as well as in Polish, Bohemian, and Scandinavian. Services in about half of the churches are conducted in foreign languages. The city has palatial hotels and fine public buildings. The city hall, completed in 1896, cost $1,200,000. A library and a museum building cost as much more. The library contains 150,000 volumes. The museum is rich, especially in natural history. The catalog number of birds' eggs and nests alone exceeds 5,000. In 1900 the population was 285,370, but the city is growing rapidly. The state census of 1905 gave 312,948. The present population cannot be short of a third of a million.