the Fox and the head
waters of Rock River, whence in later years they spread into Iowa,
Minnesota and North Dakota.

By 1850 about one-sixth of the people of the Middle West were of North
Atlantic birth, about one-eighth of Southern birth, and a like fraction
of foreign birth, of whom the Germans were twice as numerous as the
Irish, and the Scandinavians only slightly more numerous than the Welsh,
and fewer than the Scotch. There were only a dozen Scandinavians in
Minnesota. The natives of the British Islands, together with the natives
of British North America in the Middle West, numbered nearly as many as
the natives of German lands. But in 1850 almost three-fifths of the
population were natives of the Middle West itself, and over a third of
the population lived in Ohio. The cities were especially a mixture of
peoples. In the five larger cities of the section natives and foreigners
were nearly balanced. In Chicago the Irish, Germans and natives of the
North Atlantic States about equaled each other. But in all the other
cities, the Germans exceeded the Irish in varying proportions. There
were nearly three to one in Milwaukee.

It is not merely that the section was growing rapidly and was made up of
various stocks with many different cultures, sectional and European;
what is more significant is that these elements did not remain as
separate strata underneath an established ruling order, as was the case
particularly in New England. All were accepted and intermingling
components of a forming society, plastic and absorptive. This
characteristic of the section as "a good mixer" became fixed before the
large immigrations of the eighties. The foundations of the section were
laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements were particularly free
and eager to contribute to a new society and to receive an impress from
the country which offered them a liberty denied abroad. Significant as
is this fact, and influential in the solution of America's present
problems, it is no more important than the fact that in the decade
before the Civil War, the Southern element in the Middle West had also
had nearly two generations of direct association with the Northern, and
had finally been engulfed in a tide of Northeastern and Old World
settlers.

In this society of pioneers men learned to drop their old national
animosities. One of the Immigrant Guides of the fifties urged the
newcomers to abandon their racial animosities. "The American