Neither did the Germans lead in developing the new agriculture, of which coöperative dairying was the keystone. Yankee leadership therein, too, was the dominant influence. Yet, it was the Germans, Scandinavians, and other foreigners--and numerically Germans were in the majority--who, by virtue of their agricultural morale, their steadiness in carrying out plans, their patience and perseverance, have made the dairy business of Wisconsin the great industry it has become. Above all, the Germans persisted as farmers. They prospered not dramatically, like some of the more successful of the Yankee farmers, but by little and little they saved money, bought more land, better stock, and built better homes. When Yankee farmers, discouraged or impoverished by the failure of wheat, offered their farms for sale preparatory to “going west,” Germans who had managed their smaller farms more carefully stood ready to buy; when Yankees who were tired of being “tied to a cow” wanted to go to Montana, Oregon, or Wyoming to raise steers by wholesale, on the ranching plan, they sold out to Germans who made the dairy farms pay larger dividends year by year. When Yankee farmers retired to the city, or went into business, which in recent decades they have done by thousands, Germans were among those who were the keenest bidders for their farm properties. In a word, the German has succeeded agriculturally through the more and more perfect functioning, in this new land, of qualities imparted by the training and inheritance which he brought with him from the old world. On the whole, Germans have kept clear of speculation, preferring to invest their savings in neighboring lands with which they were intimately familiar, or to lend to neighboring farmers on farm mortgage security. In the aggregate, German farmers in Wisconsin have long had vast sums at interest. The Institute for Research in Land Economics (University of Wisconsin) has completed investigations which show that the nation’s area of lowest farm mortgage interest rates (5.2 per cent or less) coincides very closely with the great maple forest of eastern Wisconsin, which has been held, from the first, predominantly by German farmers.