These different nationalities are scattered all over the State; often they are found grouped in very large neighborhoods. Sometimes one of these groups is so large that, with the American-born children, it occupies entire townships, and practically controls the local churches and schools, which are generally conducted in the foreign tongue. There are extensive German, Scandinavian, and Welsh farming districts in our State where one may travel far without hearing English spoken by any one. Some crowded quarters of Milwaukee are wholly German in custom and language; and there are other streets in that city where few but Poles, Bohemians, or Russians can be found. Although these foreign-born people, as is quite natural, generally cling with tenacity to the language, the religion, and many of the customs in which they were reared, it is noticeable that all of them are eager to learn our methods of government, and to become good citizens; and their children, when allowed to mingle freely with the youth of this country, become so thoroughly Americanized that little if any difference can be distinguished between them and those whose forefathers have lived here for several generations past. There is, however, hardly a family in Wisconsin which is not of European origin. Some of us are descended from ancestors who chanced to come to the New World at an earlier period than did the ancestors of others of our fellow-citizens; that is all that distinguishes these "old American families" from those more recently transplanted. It is a very interesting study to watch the gradual evolution of a new American race from the mingling on our soil of so many different nationalities, just as the English race itself was slowly built up from the old Britons, Saxons, Norsemen, and Norman French. But we must remember that this "race amalgamation," although now proceeding upon a larger scale than was probably ever witnessed before, has always been going on in America since the earliest colonial days, when English, French, Hollanders, Swedes, Scotch, and Irish were fused as in a melting pot, for the production of the American types that we meet to-day. A variety of reasons induced foreigners to come to Wisconsin in such large numbers; they may, however, be classified under three heads, political, economic, and religious. The political reason was dissatisfaction with the government at home, chiefly because it repressed all aspiration for liberty and forced young men to sacrifice several of the best years of their lives by spending them in the army. The most powerful economic reason was inability to earn a satisfactory living in the fatherland, because worn-out soils, low prices for produce, overcrowding of population, and excessive competition among workmen resulted in starvation wages. The religious reason was the disposition of European monarchs to interfere with men's right to worship God as they pleased.