Most of the German settlers who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1683 and
established Germantown were cloth weavers. However, numerous other crafts
workers and artisans arrived from Germany in colonial times. Printers,
bookbinders, paper- makers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, tailors,
cobblers, ironworkers, and stonemasons found a market for their skills in the
English colonies. Silk workers from the town of Neufchatel established a colony
in Beaufort County, South Carolina. There they raised silkworms on mulberry
trees planted on 40,000 acres.
German redemptioners sometimes learned trades as apprentices. Such was the case
with John Peter Zenger, who arrived in 1709 at the age of 13 and spent eight
years under contract to a printer in New York. Zenger later founded his own
newspaper, The New-York Weekly Journal. A libel suit brought against him by the
colonial government resulted in the first legal victory for freedom of the press
in the American colonies.
German merchants also set up shop in the New World. Some established taverns
stocked with beer, the favorite German beverage. Immigrant Germans founded
breweries in New York and Baltimore in the early 1700s.
The majority of the colonial German immigrants were farmers. Though the American
land seemed limitless, much of it-at least in the English, colonies-was covered
with forest. Starting a farm meant chopping down trees, clearing the land, and
digging out rocks that stood in the way of plows. Undaunted, the German
immigrant farmers moved farther into Pennsylvania, up the Hudson River in New
York, and into northern New Jersey. Fewer Germans went to New England, though
some settled in the Broad Bay region and along the Kennebec River in what later
became the state of Maine. German colonial farmers also settled in Virginia,
Maryland, Delaware, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Those who were brought by the
French into Louisiana as settlers moved up the Mississippi and also into the
present-day state of Mississippi.
Eighteenth-century German farmers in the Conestoga Valley of Pennsylvania
developed a deep-bodied covered wagon to take their crops to market. In the next
century, Conestoga wagons modeled after these took thousands of pioneers across
the western plains.
In the mid-1800s, German American farmers continued west- ward across the
continent. Many took advantage of the free public land offered by the Homestead
Act of 1862. From Ohio to Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa they planted
corn, a crop seldom grown in Germany. A new German immigrant to Missouri in 1861
wrote home: "Corn...that's the most important thing in America, man and
beast live from it." Indeed, much of the corn was of a type specifically
designed for feeding animals, chiefly the pigs that were among the products of
farms in the "corn belt."
The largest number of German Americans took up dairy farming. The "dairy
belt" included parts of upstate New York as well as Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Minnesota. Dairy farms also tended to cluster around large cities, so that
their cheese, butter, and milk could be rapidly delivered to urban
markets.
The cultivation of wheat was a specialty of Germans from Russia. In 1872 the
Russian government revoked the special privileges originating with Catherine the
Great that had drawn German irnmigrants to the Volga River and Black Sea regions
in the previous century .The action cost Russia some of its best farmers, as
thou- sands of German settlers migrated to the United States. They brought with
them the seeds of hard Turkey red winter wheat. This type of wheat could be
planted in the fall and survive the harsh winters of the northern plains states
for spring harvest.
Germans from Russia sowed this crop in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and parts
of Colorado, helping to turn the vast grasslands into wheat fields that became
the bread basket of America. Germans from Russia also put down roots in
California, planting grapevines. Those from the Volga region settled around Lodi
in central California, and Black Sea Germans formed communities in the San
Joaquin Valley around Fresno, where they helped establish a raisin industry
.
Many German immigrants in the first half of the 19th century were university
graduates. Some found jobs as teachers, journalists, and clerks, but others
tried their hands at farming. They earned the nickname Latin farmers, after
their classical training in ancient Latin and Greek, which ill suited them for
the hard life of farming.
Despite the enormous influence German American farmers had on U.S. agriculture,
a majority of German-speaking immigrants engaged in other kinds of work. Some
became legendary success stories. John Jacob Astor, who arrived from Waldorf,
Germany, in 1784 as a teenager, became the United State's first millionaire
from involvement in the fur trade and real estate investments. Frederick
Weyerhaeuser, who arrived penniless in 1852, started work in a sawmill; by 1900
his lumber company owned almost 2 million acres of land. Heinrich Steinweg took
his family to New York in 1850 and opened a piano business that became known as
Steinway; its products are still standards of musical excellence.
Brewers of beer became wealthy and prominent members of every large German
American community .The Pabst and Schlitz families in Milwaukee and the Busch
family in St. Louis used their fortunes to build parks and other public
facilities in their communities.
More than most other immigrant groups, German Americans found jobs as skilled
workers. Many had learned trades in their native land. Bakers, butchers,
brewers, tailors, barbers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, and gardeners did not have
to start at the bottom as low-paid unskilled laborers. For instance, the U.S.
printing industry was dominated by German Americans, carrying on the tradition
begun by Johannes Gutenberg in 1452. Artists, musicians, and clergymen were also
among the German immigrant population.
The relatively high-paying jobs of German American men enabled their wives to
remain at home to fulfill their traditional roles as mothers and homemakers.
Relatively few German American women entered the labor force, except as teachers
and domestic servants. In 1890 about one out of every five German-born women in
the United States worked as a maid, housekeeper, or cook. Many German American
women found teaching a rewarding profession. Margaretha Meyer Schurz, wife of
the '48er Carl Schurz, is often credited with starting the first kindergarten in
the United States.
The great numbers of German and Irish immigrants who arrived in the United
States in the 1840s and 1850s resulted in a wave of antiforeign prejudice.
"Nativist" speakers argued that these newcomers were taking jobs from
native-born Americans. The fact that so many of the newcomers-nearly all the
Irish and about half of the Germans-were Roman Catholic caused fears among those
who regarded Catholicism as a threat to American traditions.
In addition, German immigrants generally continued to speak their native
language, which set them apart from the majority of Americans, who spoke
English. And in many towns, Germans' consumption of beer on Sunday, often in
lively beer halls, brought condemnation from Anglo-Saxon Protestants who felt
this to be a violation of the Sabbath.
In 1845, a group later known as the American Party was founded to block foreign
immigration. In the election of 1854, this party reached the height of its
influence by electing governors or a majority of the legislatures in seven
states. Soon afterward, however, the American Party split over the issue of
slavery.
In 1856 the newborn Republican Party made an appeal for German Americans' votes
by publishing its antislavery platform in German as well as English. Four years
later, the Republicans' Presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won a close
election with the strong support of German American voters in key states.
During the Civil War, many German Americans served enthusiastically in the Union
army. Fewer fought in the Confederate army, for the majority of German Americans
lived outside the Southern states. Germans in St Louis formed a militia that
helped ensure that border state's loyalty to The Union. Numerous German
Americans rose to the rank of general, including Carl Schurz and the flamboyant
George Armstrong Custer, whose great-grandfather (named Kuster) had been one of
the Hessians who stayed in the United States after the Revolution.
The latter half of the 19th century saw the rise of labor unions and social
reform movements in the United States. Labor unions had been formed in Germany
as early as the 1840s, and German immigrants played an active role in the U.S.
union movement. Skilled German American workers like bakers, tailors, and cigar-
makers formed local trade unions in cities such as New York, Philadelphia,
Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago.
Many German Americans, inspired by the ideas of the German philosopher Karl Marx
and other European socialists, saw the labor movement as part of a larger social
transformation. The socialist movement was particularly strong in New York and Midwestern
cities with large German American populations. In 1916 the mayor of Milwaukee
and 21 of the 25 members of its city council were socialists.
By today's standards, the goals of the 19th-century socialist labor leaders were
modest ones. German Americans led the fight for an eight-hour workday,
retirement benefits, and disability insurance. However, business leaders
condemned such demands as radical ideas, and bloody clashes between strikers and
police turned public opinion against the socialist movement. The more
conservative American Federation of Labor {AFL), established in 1886, eventually
drew most of the German American trade unions into its membership. However, the
AFL refused to admit unskilled workers in such industries as mining,
construction, and manufacturing.
In the 20th century, the growth of assembly-line industries such as automobile
manufacturing created a new wave of labor organizing. Walter Reuther, a German
American born in West Virginia in 1907, became active in the struggle to
organize automobile workers during the 1930s. Reuther served as president of the
United Automobile Workers {UAW) from 1946 until his death in 1970. In 1955, he
led the merger of the congress of Industrial Organizations {CIO), an association
of industrial workers, with the AFL.
Socialism, which was so strong an ideal among 19th- century German Americans,
failed to attract the support of most other Americans. Reuther himself fought
off a communist attempt to take control of the UAW. Yet many of the German
socialists' goals have won universal acceptance: the high standard of living
enjoyed by most American workers, the Social Security program that enables
elderly Americans to retire comfortably, and government- enforced safety in the
workplace.
* These are excerpts from the book 'The German American Family Album' by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler