This March, we are looking at the Segelke Kohlhaus Manufacturing Co, (S&K). In Activity #1 we focused more on S&K’s history and what its products were like. Now in Activity #2, we want to turn our investigation to the people who made both the corporation and the products. In other words, we now want to look at surviving sources through the prism of labor history.
What is Labor History?
As the editors of the scholarly journal Labour: Studies in Working Class History describe it, Labor History is focused on asking and answering questions like: who does the work? under what economic and political terms do they do the work? Labor history also focuses on using available primary sources to piece together what the “world” of people who worked in particular industries might have been like: the physical conditions in the places where they made products and performed services, the social conditions in which they formed bonds with coworkers, organized mutual aid societies and debated unionization, the cultural conditions in which their identities as laborers were shaped by their pride in the objects they made or their alienation from the managerial class.
Labor history overlaps significantly with another kind of history we often explore in History Club: social history. Both approaches seek to recover what is knowable about the everyday lives of people who didn’t have the leisure time and means to produce memoirs or donate documents to archives. So labor history looks for ways to explain what it was like to do particular kinds of work, how people defined the meaning and/or value of the work they did, and how they reacted to the circumstances they did their work in.
How do surviving sources shape how we can study labor history?
While looking for available primary and secondary sources for this month, we quickly discovered that the perspective of the employee’s of S&K are not well represented in the archives. Historically, working class employees rarely created many records, but sometimes little snippets sneak through the classist, racist, sexist, colonialist foundation of early U.S. record keeping. In La Crosse, we’re lucky to have had Howard Fredericks interviewing folks in the 1960s who worked in local early 20th century factories and the surviving UWL Oral History Program collection. But few other sources exist that show working class perspectives in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
One source that allows us to peek into the reality of La Crosse’s largely working class population are newspapers. Newspapers give us information on what was happening in the community, and the way that the media shapes the narrative can speak volumes, if you read the articles with a critical eye. Sometimes newspaper articles don’t give us the worker’s perspective, but report that there was a strike and the terms that were being negotiated between a company and a union. Sometimes a reporter interviewed an employee, which appears on the surface to be a glimpse into their perspective, but is still funneled through the voice, experiences, and biases of a reporter who is not a factory worker.
The Activity
With this understanding of what labor history is and how surviving primary sources may not fully present workers’ perspectives, let’s look at some primary sources written largely during the time that S&K was still operating (1857-1960) and analyze them from the labor perspective. Below, we’ve prepared some questions to consider as you read each source.
One last note: part of labor history also involves considering what else could be happening in the world that impacts someone in their everyday life. For example, during the Great Depression in the 1930s, fewer houses and buildings were constructed—which in turn would have likely impacted S&K’s profit, and in turn could have been the reason employees were laid off. During wartime, important materials like wood, lumber, and metal were rationed, and many U.S. manufactures saw huge profits if they were contracted by the government to produce war materials. Many factory workers before WWII were men, but after WWII this changed. While reading the newspaper sources we’ve assembled for Activity #2, try to consider what contextual events and eras could have shaped the experiences of the workers.
Guiding Questions
Who wrote the source you are looking at? What might their background be? What biases could they have?
What would the author’s sources be?
What is the purpose of the source you are reading? For example, is it a historical overview of the company? Is it an advertisement? A news story alerting the community of an event or milestone?
In what terms are the workers talked about, if at all? What are some adjectives used to describe them? What language is used to describe the work they do?
Do you see any examples of the workers being erased from the narrative completely? For example, does the author give the company as an entity credit for work done by individuals?
Can you think of any contextualizing events to explain any details or language within these newspaper articles?
This month, we want to return to a theme we’ve explored previously: labor history and the pride La Crosse craftspeople had in the products they made for both local and regional use. In February 2021 and April 2023 we looked at this topic through the history of the La Crosse Rubber Mills Co. Now, for March 2024, we are going to look into a manufacturing company whose employees quite literally built our city.
The craftspeople at Segelke Kohlhaus Manufacturing Company (S&K, 1857-1960) built the doors, windows, stairways, floors, trim, colonnades, and many other wood components used in residential and commercial buildings throughout western Wisconsin and the Mississippi River Valley. In our daily lives, we don’t always have the time to stop and think about how our built environment emerged. But if you’ve ever encountered surviving elements of Victorian or Arts & Crafts decorative trim, built-in cabinets or bookcases, or felt the weight in a late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century solid wood door, its existence likely traces back to S&K.
At the confluence of the La Crosse, Black, and Mississippi rivers, La Crosse was appropriately situated for a wood manufacturing company. These rivers were used in the 1850s-1890s during the height of the lumber boom to transport logs down to urban centers where they would be made into lumber, and then shipped off to make houses all over the Americas. In La Crosse, sawmills and lumber mills dotted the riverbanks, and grew enormously as La Crosse’s working class population grew to employ the mills. Tapping into this supply of lumber and labor, S&K opened its first factory in 1857, situated right alongside the sawmills on the riverfront.
Local lore says that during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, 1 out of every 3 doors in the Midwest was produced by S&K employees. At History Club, whenever we can, we like to explore how the history that happened in La Crosse connects to the wider world. So this month, we want to look into just how influential this company was for La Crosse and the Midwest. For Activity #1, we’ve assembled a few sources to help you envision what S&K was and what their employees made. We’ll read a blog post about the company’s 100-year history, look at some photographs, and flip through one of their product catalogs from 1911-1912. Then, for Activity #2, we hope to look more into the employee’s perspectives and consider what it may have been like working for S&K.
Have you ever heard of the Segelke Kohlhaus Manufacturing Company? In what terms?
It’s easy when talking about history to simply credit a company for the products made there and erase the human component. But part of looking at history from the labor perspective involves giving appropriate credit to the humans who actually provided the labor behind goods and often dedicated their lives to a factory floor perfecting their craft. As you read about S&K and look through their catalog, do you see any hint of nod to their employees? Can you think of other examples in your life or in our community’s history that employees are uplifted or erased from the narrative?
Both the blog post and the product catalog give us hints about how S&K presented itself, and its products, to the wider world. What image did S&K seem to project to potential customers? How might have the craftspeople who made these products fit into that image?
Have you ever been inside a home built in the La Crosse area from 1857-1950 with original woodwork? Think about the doors, windows, staircases, floors, etc. How does knowing about S&K’s history change the way you think about the wooden architectural elements you encounter in older buildings in La Crosse?
This month’s History Club meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, 5:30-6:30pm at the La Crosse Public Library Archives Reading Room. RSVP here.
This spring, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA) celebrates their 175th anniversary as an organization devoted to prayer and service. They formed in Bavaria in the late 1840s with their initial members emigrating to the U.S. shortly thereafter, joining the nearly 1,400,000 German-speakers arriving in the U.S. between 1840 and 1860. According to their website, the initial FSPA members were “officially received into the Diocese of Milwaukee on May 28, 1849.” The FSPA’s roots in La Crosse began 153 years ago, in 1871 following the westward migration of German-speaking Catholics across Wisconsin before and after the U.S. Civil War
For this 175th anniversary celebration, the FSPA is partnering with the La Crosse Public Library Archives to create some public history programs exploring their legacy. So this month, we are using History Club to begin evaluating surviving perspectives on FSPA’s missionary work. While the FSPA’s history is vast and includes the St. Francis Hospital (now Mayo), St. Francis Nursing School (now Viterbo), St. Rose Convent, as well as dozens of parochial schools scattered around Wisconsin, for January’s History Club Activity we are going to focus on one school run by FSPA: St. Mary’s Indian School, located on the Bad River Reservation (Odanah, Wisconsin, 1883 – 1969.)
As their website indicates, the FSPA’s original mission was to proselytize among the German-speaking and other Northwestern European immigrants they migrated with and settled among in mid-nineteenth century Wisconsin. But by the 1880s, their missionary goals expanded to include attempted indoctrination of indigenous children and their families in Wisconsin via mission boarding schools. Context-wise, this timing makes sense: the late nineteenth century witnessed a new phase of settler colonialism tactics as boarding schools intended to “civilize” indigenous children gradually replaced forced removal and warfare.
While St. Mary’s Indian School was located in northern Wisconsin, this January we want to explore the ways we can feel and see lingering traces of its history here in La Crosse, where the FSPA is headquartered. For Activity 1, we are going to read about the history of the school as well as a few online publications written by either survivors of the school or descendants of survivors.
Historical Background: St Mary’s Indian School
In 2020, the La Crosse Historical Society published an article in their newsletter called, “A Troubled Past: The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and St. Mary’s Indian School,” by Avery Wehrs. Wehrs’ piece gives us a general overview of indigenous students’ experiences at St. Mary’s and insight into why some FSPA members think re-evaluating the boarding school’s history is an important undertaking. Access here:
Mary Annette Pember is a journalist who’s mom was a survivor of St. Mary’s. She writes openly about her mother’s experiences and memories. Below are links to a number of Pember’s articles. Please note that these articles include descriptions of abuse and trauma. This is a challenging set of readings, so be sure to take breaks, drink water, and take care of yourself!
What are some of your base-level reactions? Journal about them, or talk through them with a trusted friend if you need to work through your thoughts.
In what ways do you see traces of the St. Mary’s history in La Crosse? How does this history impact our community? Our current, every day lives?
In what ways do you think that institutions of power (e.g. U.S. federal government, state and local governments, FSPA, etc.) need to react to this history to work towards reconciliation and healing for descendants who are impacted in the ways described by Mary Annette Pember and Avery Wehrs?
What questions are you left with?
For Activity 2, we plan to look into some historical context that explains how Native American Boarding Schools became such a prevalent mechanism for genocide in the U.S. We will look at Federal Indian policies that made way for and upheld these assimilationist practices, as well as what was happening in the FSPA’s world that made this a part of their history. If you find yourself left with questions about the historical context that shapes the experiences you read above, contact Jenny with your questions and we might be able to address them in Activity 2!
As a historian and an archivist, Tiffany and Jenny are trained to try and look at contemporary issues with a longer-term view. Present-day conversations about homelessness in La Crosse (for examples, click here and here) made us curious about the kinds of primary source evidence and concepts that could help us develop a longer-term understanding of how La Crosse community members responded to homelessness and housing insecurity in previous centuries. Our initial investigations led us to two kinds of information: (1) there’s a cluster of sources related to formal and informal support networks ca. the 1890s-1960s offering temporary housing and food for unhoused folks, and (2) there’s a cluster of sources about the La Crosse Housing Authority’s efforts to create more affordable housing options throughout the city ca. 1945-1990s.
So in July, we’re investigating this first category of sources about formal and informal support networks for people experiencing homelessness in the late 1800s-mid 1900s. Then, in August, we’ll turn to the mid-20th century affordable housing movement in La Crosse.
While History Club’s aim is to explore local history in a way that is relevant to today’s world, we in no way want to imply that the transients discussed in July’s activities are akin to the unhoused communities that are living in La Crosse today. Perhaps some lines could be drawn to connect common themes between the transient populations of the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s (which all have their own unique circumstances) with those of the 2020s, but the reality is that today’s modern world has a completely different set of barriers than those that existed in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s. The purpose of July’s History Club activities is really to be thinking about how/when/why/what historic and current barriers were established, and what this means for how we talk about these issues in our modern world.
Recapping Activity #1
In July Activity #1, we introduced the concepts of mobility and settledness. And, we examined surviving records from two places where unhoused or housing insecure folks could get food and shelter: the La Crosse Home for the Friendless Women and Children and the La Crosse Police Department. One thing that became apparent from examining these records is that the terms “homeless” or “unhoused” lumps together multiple distinct kinds of people experiencing un-settled conditions for differing reasons.
The La Crosse Home for the Friendless Women and Children typically took in local residents who lost their housing if their financial situation changed: when their spouses or parents died, or when they lost their jobs. However, they also appear to have temporarily housed intentionally-mobile people, including at least one teenage runaway.
The La Crosse Police Department lodgers log books provide evidence of intentionally-mobile people who either sought-out or were forced to use the city jail for temporary accommodation while traveling across the country by hopping freight trains. As Jenny and Tiffany continued looking into the surviving evidence for the late 1800s – mid 1900s, it became apparent that the transients (i.e. railway tramps or hoboes)showing up in the police department logs had also captured the attention of La Crosse’s residents in the early 20th century.
Want to Learn More About the History of Transients From a National Lens?
We should explain that the terms “tramp” and “hobo” were used imprecisely and somewhat interchangeably in the late 19th – mid 20th centuries. Historians suggest that “tramp” originally meant a wanderer and was used somewhat synonymously with “vagrant.” Then, “hobo” possibly emerged as an alternative term to indicate a homeless person migrating in search of work. Both seem to have been used to distinguish mobile unemployed and homeless people from “bums” (used to describe stationary homeless people living in a particular community). What is clear though, is that the number of people hitching rides on railway cars across the U.S.and Canada increased significantly in the 1870s and after. Boom-and-bust financial cycles associated with bigger-picture trends including industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of commercialized agriculture posed new challenges for people seeking secure access to food and housing. To help fill in the historical context for the late 19th century emergence of tramps and hoboes, we’re offering two brief, optional, excerpts from secondary sources:
So for July Activity #2, let’s investigate how transients ca. 1890-1940were depicted by settled residents in La Crosse. We have two kinds of primary sources for this activity: oral histories and local newspaper articles. In these sources we get hints of how unhoused folks survived while temporarily staying in La Crosse and how local residents and institutions assisted them. But in a continuing theme from Activity #1, we also have to acknowledge a major limitation of these primary sources: these views of homelessness do not come from the perspective of railway tramps or hoboes themselves, but from non-homeless observers, and in some cases, the memories of folks from when they were children.
Oral Histories
Raymond Bice (1968)
Bice was asked by interviewer Howard Fredricks to describe what he remembered about various kinds of people traveling through La Crosse in the early 20th century.
Howard Fredricks (interviewer): And the railroad experience, did you run across hobos? Was this always a highlight to hear the experiences of the professional bums?
Raymond Bice: Yes the hobos were every place, you would hardly ever get to hop a freight without running into three or four of these men and they had what they called jungles—the hobo jungles. And they had certain spots in the railroad yards to keep away from the dicks, as they called it—the railroad detectives. And they’d have little cans of soup you know and that sort of thing, and of course they would come up to town begging for food. They would rap on the door…sometimes your folks would, oh let them do a little chore around the house, and then give them a sandwich or two to take with them. They never ate them on the premises, they always took them with them and back to the railroad yards. But one thing about it, Howard, that is different than present time, is that we never had any fear of these men. I mean they were just jolly sort of people—some of them were rather gruff and rough—and, of course they all were unshaven and ill-clothed, but they were friendly and they always had a story to tell. And we never had any fear of them hitting us over the head or injuring us personally, there was never any problem at all that way. Everybody felt safe. Today, in our modern times, it’s hardly safe to walk out of the house into the park.
Maude VanLoon (1970)
Railroad tracks ran through the Van Loon’ family’s farmland periodically bringing them into contact with young men riding the rails.
Note: The original audio recording has poor sound quality, so we’re only able to provide a transcript for this interview.
Steve Pavella: Yeah, I remember one thing, Ryan, for example during the Depression, it was very common to have hoboes—people on the move, transients—going across the country. And I remember they would come to our door, just like they went to other doors in the [Goosetown] neighborhood asking for something to eat. They had no money. I mean things were tough. And I remember my mom—not that we were rich—but, I mean we were able to have decent food on the table thanks to our gardens and things like that. And I still remember my mom making nice warm egg sandwiches—kind of a fried egg and a nice homemade bread—and then wrapping it up with pickles. And the hobo would stay outside and wait for my mom to prepare that. Then my mom would take that out. So we had the hobos moving through the neighborhood particularly during the Depression years.
Newspapers
Transients and their encampments periodically (often referred to as “hobo jungles”) appeared in the pages of the La Crosse Tribune throughout the 1890s-1940s. While local newspaper coverage can be a window into what was on the minds of community members, we also have to acknowledge that around the turn of the 20th century it was common for newspaper reporters and editors to sensationalize their stories. Coverage of the hobo lifestyle sometimes veered into the exotic, offering settled audiences details of a lifestyle they could not experience firsthand in exchange for increased readership. For these reasons, it is best to read these sources with a critical eye. Sometimes newspaper articles from this time period do not inform us how local community members felt about an issue, but instead inform us on how the local media educated folks on an issue.
Admittedly, the sources for Activity #2 focus on just one segment of the larger and more diverse homeless population in 19th-20th century La Crosse. But what do these sources potentially help us figure out about transients moving through La Crosse during this timeframe? What do they help us figure out about our own community?
As with Activity #1, we have to acknowledge the limitations of these sources: we have settled and housed people writing about mobile and unhoused people instead of having direct access to the accounts of people experiencing homelessness. But what can we figure out about the potential decision-making and survival strategies of transients via these sources? In what ways are the people who are discussed in the newspaper articles and oral histories stripped of their humanity? In what ways do we see evidence of their humanity?
Did you detect any evidence of journalists sensationalizing the lifestyle and living conditions of transients for the sake of the news story?
Because the oral history interview process requires narrators to recall events that happened decades prior, nostalgia can sometimes seep into their recollections. For example, in Raymond Bice’s 1968 interview he said, “We never had any fear of [the transients]…Everybody felt safe. Today, in our modern times, it’s hardly safe to walk out of the house into the park.” But in newspaper articles from the 1900s-1940s,the transients are often depicted as dangerous people. Do you think this is a case of romanticizing the past, or a case of the newspapers exaggerating? Neither? Both?
What do you think we can learn from this history that applies to our community today, without romanticizing the experiences of the transients, or comparing/minimizing the systemic issues that were and are at play here?
July’s History Club meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 26, 2023 from 5:30-6:30 in the Archives Reading Room at the La Crosse Public Library. RSVP here.
As new commercial-minded settlements began in what’s now La Crosse and Onalaska c. 1840s-1850s, facilitating the movement of trade goods—like wheat and lumber—up and down the Mississippi River has been a vital economic priority. In his 1854 A Brief Sketch of La Crosse, Wisc’n, Reverend Spencer Carr insisted “with the Mississippi by her side,” the La Crosse region was sure to prosper. Today, the Mississippi River remains a vital commercial thoroughfare even in the age of airplanes. According to a 2018 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article by Meg Jones about the aging and ailing lock and dam system on the Mississippi River, 60% of all grain produced in the U.S. currently travels up and down the Mississippi.
This lock and dam system was created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (largely in the 1930s, and in part was provided a workforce with the New Deal), and has a long, complex history of its own. If you’re curious about that backstory, you can read more about it in this 10-chapter history series published by the National Parks Service. But for this month’s History Club activity, we really just want to think about how it impacted our local community. The purpose of the project was to create a 9-foot channel, which would majorly improve the ability to transport commercial goods up and down the Mississippi River.
Creating the new 9-foot navigation channel greatly altered the flow and depth of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Each lock and dam complex forms a pool. Lock and Dam No. 7, the closest complex to La Crosse, forms what we now call Lake Onalaska. The name “Lake Onalaska” was chosen in 1937 by a popular vote; the 261 community members who chose that name were by far in the majority. You can see the other name options in this La Crosse County Record notice from May 27, 1937:
Because this was a federal project, the LPL Archives does not hold many archival records surrounding this project. There are, however, photographs of Lock and Dam No. 7 and Lake Onalaska. View these below.
At our meeting, we will focus our discussion around our current built environment, and the ways in which our natural landscape has changed through time, especially as a result of settler-colonists.
Below is a photograph of the Black River before the lock and dam system was built along the Upper Mississippi River. Looking at it now, would you ever guess this is what it looked like 100 years ago?
May 2023 Meeting
This month, Jenny will be on vacation for the last two weeks. This means there will be no online Activity #2, and we have moved the May 2023 History Club meeting to Wednesday May 17, 5:30-7pm. And for this month’s meeting, we’re taking a field trip! Instead of meeting in the Archives Reading Room, we’re going to go visit Lake Onalaska. To get there, you have two choices:
Meet at the LPL Main in the parking lot at 5:30, and leave together by bike. This is a 6.5 mile route one way (13 miles total), and should take 30-45 minutes to ride. There is a mix of trail and road biking, which means you should bring lights if you have them, wear a helmet, and brush up on hand signals for turning at intersections. We will not be riding on sidewalks. View the route here. If you want to meet up with the group along the way, please contact Jenny ahead of time at jderocher@lacrosselibrary.org. Jenny will run through group riding rules before taking off.
Drive and meet us there! If the weather is bad, we can all plan on driving and meet in the shelter at the Great River Landing park at 6pm.
In Activity 1, we explored the labor conditions that sourced the raw rubber that went on to become all sorts of U.S. goods—tires, hoses, electric insulation, fan belts, balloons, pencil erasers, as well as the boots, galoshes, raincoats, and overcoats produced by the La Crosse Rubber Mills. So now that we understand more about the experiences of people who were involved with the early journey of getting rubber to factories like the one here in La Crosse, let’s look into the experiences of local laborers.
For Activity 2, we have set up two parts: (1) a reading about rubber factory workers and their working conditions in Akron, Ohio (optional) and (2) segments from oral histories conducted with employees of the La Crosse Rubbers Mills Co. here in La Crosse.
If you’d like to expand on this comparative aspect – rubber workers worldwide -vs- here in La Crosse – we laid out in Activity #1, we’ve provided another section of Devil’s Milk by John Tully (about 17 pages of text).
To investigate the first-hand experiences of rubber workers in La Crosse, we’ve assembled a number of snippets of oral histories from the UWL Oral History Program, digitized and accessible thanks to the UWL Murphy Library Digital Collections. Listening to these former factory workers describe their experiences first hand offers an alternate perspective to what we can glean by reading Tully’s accounts in The Devil’s Milk. And, the oral histories let us add La Crosse into the history of global rubber production and consumption.
Please note some of these are hard to hear. You may need to play around with your speakers or headphones situation to try and hear better.
The materials for Activity #2 continue our exploration of the lives and experiences of laborers associated with rubber production and consumption. What have you been able to piece together about the experiences of U.S.-based rubber workers? What stands out? Why?
This exploration of U.S.-based rubber workers relies on two different kinds of source material. For Akron, we have historian John Tully’s narrative. For La Crosse we have oral histories with La Crosse Rubber Mills Co. employees. How do these two kinds of sources differ in terms of what they help us understand about rubber workers’ experiences? Where do the oral histories overlap with what The Devil’s Milk offers?
This month’s meeting will be Wednesday, April 26, 2023, 5:30-6:30pm. Because the LPL Archives is the repository for the records of the La Crosse Rubber Mills, we will get to explore boxes of photographs and catalogs at this month’s meeting. Photographs will allow us to see the environments of the rubber workers in La Crosse, and the catalogs will show us the final products of their craft. Register here.
Activity #1 this month allowed us to explore a piece of La Crosse’s industrial history and food economy through the surviving primary sources for an influential part of that story: the Listman Flour Mill. Yet, as we know from our many months of History Club explorations, localized primary can sometimes be fragmentary and topical secondary histories may not contain as much local-level details as we wish they did. Which has led us to realize how challenging it is to understand what was so significant about turn of the century U.S. flour mills like Listman, and how this time period changed the way food is made in our kitchens today.
For Activity #2, we have pulled together sections of two PBS documentaries to illustrate what we mean about the limitations of local sources and topical histories.
First, check out these two sections from PBS Wisconsin’s Hometown Stories documentary on La Crosse. As you watch, notice how La Crosse’s role as regional center of food milling is either briefly mentioned, or not mentioned at all.
Wisconsin Hometown Stories, La Crosse: Reinvention
Second, let’s watch a section of a 1-hr Twin Cities PBS special called “Flour Power.” The first part of this documentary walks us through the revolution that occurred in the flour mills in the Cities, and the strings Cadwallader Washburn pulled to give us the flour we have in our cupboards today.
Once you’ve finished viewing the video clips, reflect on the questions below. This month, we have a few different topics that sometimes diverge and sometimes overlap, so we’ve organized the below questions topically to help us keep track of it all.
QUESTIONS
Cadwallader Washburn. Jenny and Tiffany have essentially written Governor Washburn into La Crosse flour milling history by extension (he only ever owned a sawmill here in La Crosse). We’ll be curious to hear how that worked out! What kind of picture did “Flour Power” paint of Cadwallader Washburn? How should we feel about him as such an important figure in La Crosse history?
Flour Milling History as part of Midwestern History and La Crosse History. How does “Flour Power” help argue that the midwest flour industry revolutionized our world? Thinking about the near-absence of reference to La Crosse’s flour milling role in the “Hometown Stories” clips, and looking back at Activity #1, what key points about Listman and other La Crosse area mills should have/could have been included? Why?
Whiteness and Flour History. Around minute 12:50, one of the historians interviewed for Flour Power, Michael Lansing, compares the obsession of the purity in white flour to other movements happening in the U.S. in the post-Reconstruction Era around purity and whiteness. Have you ever thought of flour from this perspective?
February is a short month. It’s a cold month. It’s a month when people turn to creative pursuits that can be done indoors. And it’s a month to celebrate love, if you’re into that. Here at History Club, we’re into that. Love for La Crosse is what we aim to build. And what celebrates love better than food?
This month, we’ve chosen an underutilized social history primary source to explore: local recipe books from the 19th and 20th centuries. Neither Jenny nor Tiffany are big, impressive chefs, so this is not intended to be a very challenging month. And we know food prices are high right now, so there’s absolutely no expectation that anyone has to buy any ingredients, or try cooking any of the recipes, or do anything out of their comfort zone! We’re just going to share a few old recipes with you and you can choose your involvement—whether that is reading them, researching more about these foods and drinks, or actually going into the kitchen and attempting to translate these historic ways of cooking into our modern way of cooking.
For activity one, we’re simply going to share a few old recipes that are held in the archives at the La Crosse Public Library. Activity two will be the deep dive into the social context of the local food economy: where people would have found these ingredients, how much those ingredients may have cost at the time, techniques we see in the cookbooks, and the kitchens and people surrounding these recipes. Throughout the month, if you feel so inspired, you are welcome to try a recipe out.
The first recipe book we’re going to look at is from c. 1860. This is just a few years after La Crosse was incorporated as a City (1857). The local population at the time was 3,860. The author of this recipe book is unknown. But the fact that someone had time to create and preserve the cookbook, might let us potentially envision some things about the author’s gender, social class, and daily life. It is hard to read, but if you are practiced at reading cursive and have some patience, you should be able to decipher it.
Luckily, the other selections for our first activity (below) are all typed. As you flip through the cookbooks, we have some guiding questions to help you reflect on what you’re reading.
Author unknown, circa 1860.
Woman’s Exchange Cook Book, unknown publication date, maybe c. 1900-1920.
From the Ladies’ Society of the First Presbyterian Church, 1923.
Doerflinger’s Cook Book by Grace E. Denison, 1932.
Congregation Sons of Abraham Jewish Women’s League, publication date unknown, maybe c. 1930-1960.
Bethel Lutheran Church Youth Group, 1987.
GUIDING QUESTIONS
What is your overall feeling while reading these recipes?
What are a few things in these recipes that seemed outrageous to you? Why?
Did you see any recipes that are similar to anything you make often? If so, what might that suggest about how or why particular recipes continue to be prepared and eaten decades or centuries later?
What is a recipe you might consider trying? Why?
While nineteenth and early-mid twentieth century historians sometimes paid attention to foodways and what people ate, food history has become a much more popular research topic in the past 30-40 years. What do you think food history and recipe books can help us understand about the history of La Crosse? How or Why?
This month, we want to introduce one of our favorite pathways into studying history: Labor History. The backstory begins 6 years ago, when Jenny took her first class with Tiffany. It was a class about commodities in world history. Tiffany taught the class focusing on four commodities: sugar, coffee, rubber, and bananas. This class impacted Jenny so much that she even got a tattoo in its honor. The primary and secondary sources in that class taught her 1) that she values learning history from a perspective that focuses on the lives of the workers (aka laborers) who built our world as we know it, and 2) that rubber has a surprisingly large role in our everyday lives, as well as the millions of people who were historically exploited for the production of rubber.
When studying labor history, Tiffany and Jenny typically like to focus on two things: workers’ experiences and their working conditions. This month, we will try and present resources that cover both of these aspects. First, we will read two short chapters from a book called The Devil’s Milk: A Social History of Rubber, by John Tully, which will give us an idea of the experiences and conditions for rubber laborers in two rubber capitals: Akron, Ohio and Manchester, England. The second activity will have us look at some primary sources from La Crosse to connect our community to this wider, global history of the production of rubber goods.
Chapter 3 & 9 of Devil’s Milk are together about 30 pages of reading. We included the preface of the book, so you can read John Tully’s small explanation of what inspired his research. It’s good to remember that historians too have biases and Tully explains his in his preface.
[La Crosse] History Club 
