The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform

CHAPTER ONE- Milwaukee: The City and Its Health Problems

CHAPTER ONE Milwaukee: The City and Its Health Problems From the beginning Milwaukee promised health and prosperity . Situated at the confluence of three rivers and Lake Michigan, the city held what many interpreted to be the key to western settlement: a face to the East and a route to the West. Already an active American Indian trading post when interested speculators arrived in the 1830s, the site seemed ideal for urban commercial growth. l It also seemed to be a healthy spot. With the exception of the Menomonee marsh, the area rose in gently rolling hills and enjoyed the benefit of salubrious breezes from the lake. There was every reason for settlers to expect a successful metropolis to emerge from the small village on the western banks of Lake Michigan. Indeed, Milwaukee fulfilled its promise. In the decades following settlement,2 it leaped to prominence as a serious I "Thanks to the Indians for choosing the site. The first civilized or semi-civilized people who visited Wisconsin for any but missionary purposes came solely to trade with the aborigines.... They went wherever the Indians, with whom it was desired to establish commercial relations, had built their straw-like villages.... Their sole object and thought was to find the Indians. They found them at the mouth of the Mahn-ahwaukee river, and there tarried. Hence came 'Milwaukee.' " United States Department of Interior, Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. Report of the Social Statistics of Cities 2 (Washington, 1887): 660. 2 The village was incorporated in 1837, and the eastern and western 10 Copyrighted Material THE CITY AND ITS HEALTH PROBLEMS rival to other western cities such as Chicago and St. Louis. With an economy based on supplying settlers in the region and on the wheat trade of the upper northwest, the city's population grew. Influxes of German and Irish immigrants joined early English and American residents to provide the base of the new city's population. Many who sought their fortunes in the new Northwest Territory, on its urban frontiers , found what they were looking for in Milwaukee. Rapid population growth characterized Milwaukee's development in the late nineteenth century. At mid-century, the city housed 20,000 people; by 1880 the population had reached 115,000. During the next decade the population almost doubled to 204,000 and, by 1910, 373,857 people lived in Milwaukee.3 (See Table 1-1.) This rapid population growth, reflecting immigration, birth rates, and decreasing mortality, provided the labor force for Milwaukee's expanding economy. It also forced the city to reevaluate its responsibilities for citizen welfare. Such rapid expansion TABLE 1-1 Milwaukee Population Growth Year Population %Increase Year Population %Increase 1850 20,061 1920 457,147 22.3 1860 45,246 125.5 1930 578,249 26.5 1870 71,440 57.9 1940 587,472 15.9 1880 115,587 61.8 1950 637,392 8.5 1890 204,468 76.9 1960 741,324 16.3 1900 285,315 39.5 1970 717,372 - 3.2 1910 373,857 31.0 1980 632,989 -11.7 (preliminary) parts consolidated in 1839. The city was incorporated in 1846, adding the south side. See Bayrd Still, "The Growth of Milwaukee as Recorded by Contemporaries," Wisconsin Magazine ofHistory 21 (1938): 264; and the same author's Milwaukee: The History of a City (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1965). 3 United States Department of State, Seventh Census, 1850, Population (Washington, 1853), p. 922; United States Department of Interior, Tenth Census, 1880, Statistics of Population (Washington, 1883), p. 370; Eleventh Census, 1890, Population (Washington, 1895), p. 265; Bureau of the Census , Thirteenth Census, 1910, Population, vol. 1 (Washington, 1912), p. 670. 11 Copyrighted Material THE CITY AND ITS HEALTH PROBLEMS soon overwhelmed the churches, private philanthropy, and small city agencies, the traditional caretakers of the sick poor, the homeless, and thejobless. While population itself does not explain the growing responsibility of the municipal government for the welfare of its citizens, wide-scale population increases provided the impetus under which that responsibility developed. The dramatic increases of this period led to Milwaukee's ranking as the twelfth largest city in the United States by 1910. From its incorporation, Milwaukee has been home to many different peoples. Germans, the major immigrant group to choose the city as their American home, began arriving there in significant numbers in the 1840s. By 1850...