The northwestern State governments were hardly less interested in inducing immigrants to help fill up the vacant square miles and townships than were the railroads, for developed farms meant towns, diversified industry, and greater assessment values, which, being translated, meant much-needed public buildings, institutions, and improvements. The competition of the States, for immigrants such as the Norwegians, re-enforced and parallelled that of the railroad and land companies. Wisconsin appointed a Commissioner of Emigration in 1852, who resided in New York, and employed a Norwegian and a German assistant.[203] The following year another Act created a Traveling Emigrant Agent, and prescribed that he should "travel constantly between this State and the city of New York," to advertise "our great natural resources, advantages and privileges, and brilliant prospects for the future."[204] Pamphlets by the thousand in German, Norwegian, and Dutch were sent out in America and Europe. The office was abolished in 1855, but in 1867 another Act created an unpaid Board of Immigration and appropriated $2,000 for printing pamphlets in English, Welsh, German, and the Scandinavian languages.[205] The State even went so far, in a later Act, as to authorize the Board, in its discretion, to help with money, "such immigrants as are determined to make Wisconsin their future home."[206] [203] _Laws of Wisconsin_, 1852, ch. 432; Ibid., 1853, ch. 53; _Wisconsin Documents_, 1853, 1854, Reports of Commissioner of Emigration. [204] _General Acts of Wisconsin_, 1853, ch. 56. [205] _Ibid._, 1855, ch. 3; 1867, ch. 126; 1868, ch. 120; _Governor's Messages and Documents_, 1870, 11. [206] _General Acts of Wisconsin_, 1869, ch. 118. The Board was succeeded by a Commissioner (Ole C. Johnson) in 1871, whose office was in turn abolished in 1874. The story of Wisconsin's later organizations for promoting immigration ought almost to go into the chapter on politics--a new Board in 1879, abolished in 1887, renewed for two years in 1895, and revived for another two years in 1899.[207] In 1880, at the request of the president of the Wisconsin Central Railway Company, K. K. Kennan, agent of the land department of that company, was also appointed agent for the State in Europe, without expense to the State.[208] [207] _Ibid._, 1871, ch. 155; 1874, ch. 238; 1879, ch. 176; 1887, ch. 21; 1895, ch. 235; 1899, ch. 279. The abolished Commissioner of 1874 declared the repeal was "conceived in vindictiveness and brought about by third-rate politicians, and followed my refusal to appoint to place in my office" certain incompetents. _Report of Commissioner of Immigration_, 1874, 2. [208] _Annual Report of Board of Immigration_, 1880, 6.