re
teeming with little volumes giving, in the methodical Teutonic
fashion, conservative advice to prospective immigrants and rather
accurate descriptions of America, with statistical information and
abstracts of American laws. Many of the immigrants had further
detailed information from relatives and friends already prospering on
western farms or in rapidly growing towns. This was, therefore, far
from a pauper invasion. It included every class, even broken-down
members of the nobility. The majority were, naturally, peasants and
artisans, but there were multitudes of small merchants and farmers.
And the political refugees included many men of substantial property
and of notable intellectual attainments.[27]

Bremen was the favorite port of departure for these German emigrants
to America. Havre, Hamburg, and Antwerp were popular, and even London.
During the great rush every ship was overcrowded and none was over
sanitary. Steerage passengers were promiscuously crowded together and
furnished their own food; and the ship's crew, the captain, the agents
who negotiated the voyage, and the sharks who awaited their arrival in
America, all had a share in preying upon the inexperience of the
immigrants. Arrived in America, these Germans were not content to
settle, like dregs, in the cities on the seacoast. They were land
lovers, and westward they started at once, usually in companies,
sometimes as whole communities, by way of the Erie Canal and the Great
Lakes, and later by the new railway lines, into Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Iowa, where their
instinct for the soil taught them to select the most fertile spots.
Soon their log cabins and their ample barns and flourishing stock
bespoke their success.

The growing Western cities called to the skilled artisan, the small
tradesman, and the intellectuals. Cincinnati early became a German
center. In 1830 the Germans numbered five per cent of its population;
in 1840, twenty-three per cent; and in 1869, thirty-four per cent.
Milwaukee, "the German Athens," as it was once called, became the
distributing point of German immigration and influence in the
Northwest. Its _Gesangvereine_ and _Turnvereine_ became as famous as
its lager beer, and German was heard more frequently than English upon
its streets. St. Louis was the center of a German influence that
extended throughout the Missouri Valley. Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, and many of the minor t