, a tendency is showing
itself to divide the farms and to sell to thrifty Germans, or to
cultivate the soil by tenants, while the farmer retires to live in the
neighboring village, and perhaps to organize creameries and develop a
dairy business. The result is that a replacement of nationalities is in
progress. Townships and even counties once dominated by the native
American farmers of New York extraction are now possessed by Germans or
other European nationalities. Large portions of the retail trades of the
towns are also passing into German hands, while the native element seeks
the cities, the professions, or mercantile enterprises of larger
character. The non-native element shows distinct tendencies to dwell in
groups. One of the most striking illustrations of this fact is the
community of New Glarus, in Wisconsin, formed by a carefully organized
migration from Glarus in Switzerland, aided by the canton itself. For
some years this community was a miniature Swiss canton in social
organization and customs, but of late it has become increasingly
assimilated to the American type, and has left an impress by
transforming the county in which it is from a grain-raising to a dairy
region.

From Milwaukee as a center, the influence of the Germans upon the social
customs and ideals of Wisconsin has been marked. Milwaukee has many of
the aspects of a German city, and has furnished a stronghold of
resistance to native American efforts to enact rigid temperance
legislation, laws regulative of parochial schools, and similar attempts
to bend the German type to the social ideas of the pioneer American
stock. In the last presidential election, the German area of the State
deserted the Democratic party, and its opposition to free silver was a
decisive factor in the overwhelming victory of the Republicans in
Wisconsin. With all the evidence of the persistence of the influence of
this nationality, it is nevertheless clear that each decade marks an
increased assimilation and homogeneity in the State; but the result is a
compromise, and not a conquest by either element.

The States of the Old Northwest gave to McKinley a plurality of over
367,000 out of a total vote of about 3,734,000. New England and the
Middle States together gave him a plurality of 979,000 in about the same
vote, while the farther West gave to Bryan a decisive net plurality. It
thus appears that the Old Northwest occupied the position of a political
middle region betw