“Speak to a cow as you would a lady,” said Wisconsin Governor W.D. Hoard, founder of the state’s Dairymen’s Association and credited by onetime Milwaukee Journal columnist Dennis McCann for transforming the Badger State into America’s Dairyland. The Wisconsin Story collects 150 bits of Badger history, mostly personality profiles but also quick looks at historical moments, including Prohibition, whose xenophobic advocates decried beer as “the Kaiser’s brew.” Some of the incidents McCann includes are well known to local history buffs, such as the 1860 sinking of the steamer Lady Elgin, resulting in hundreds of deaths in Lake Michigan. Others are sadly forgotten, including Clarence Darrow’s 1898 defense of striking Oshkosh millworkers (they made $1 for 10 hours of work).
