¹ The Bennett Law required the teaching of four primary subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic, and United States history—to be conducted in English. While the law did not formally restrict the teaching of foreign languages, it brought those programs under greater scrutiny as its supporters campaigned around the state in support of English monolingualism as a form of education.

² Numerous works identify the period of 1890-1920 as the Progressive Era, during which urban school systems initiated efforts to draw more students into a regulated system of schooling at earlier ages, for longer periods of time, with more well-trained teachers. All these changes were at the behest of expert administrators and pedagogues, or, to use David Tyack’s terms, “administrative and pedagogical progressives.” These works have loomed large in the historiography of the Progressive Era. However, Carl Kaestle’s Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) demonstrates that the common school reform movement of the 1840s aspired to these ends. Without political support in that period, they never materialized. Yet, to recognize the 1890s as the only period that created the social and political conditions under which these processes took shape limits our understanding of the system-building process. For a more extended periodization of the Progressive Era, see Clif Stratton, Education for Empire: American Schools, Race, and the Paths of Good Citizenship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), which convincingly argues in favor of periodizing the Progressive Era between 1882 and 1924, the respective years in which the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act were passed.

³ I developed my understanding of standardization and consolidation from David Tyack’s One Best System, Herbert Kliebard’s The Struggle for the American Curriculum, Ron Cohen’s Children of the Mill, Tracy Steffes’ School, Society, and State, and David Gamson’s The Importance of Being Urban.

⁴ Tracy L. Steffes, School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

⁵ Paul Ramsey, “In the Region of Babel: Public Bilingual Schooling in the Midwest, 1840s–1880s,” History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2009), 267–90.

⁶ On “district progressivism” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see David A. Gamson, The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). The paucity of foreign language instruction was not merely a matter of “Anglo intimidation and coercion.” writes Jonathan Zimmerman. “Ethnics against Ethnicity: European Immigrants and Foreign Language Instruction, 1890-1940,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (2002), 1383-404. On the use of German as a primary language of instruction in rural Wisconsin schools, see Antje Petty, “Immigrant Languages and Education: Wisconsin’s German Schools,” Wisconsin Talk: Linguistic Diversity in the Badger State, ed. Purnell et. al. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 37-57.

⁷ For more on a pluralistic approach to Americanization, see Jeffrey E. Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), Carl F. Kaestle, Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), and Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961). For a concise overview of progressive ideologies, see William J. Reese, “The Origins of Progressive Education,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 1-24. For an account of the “consolidation of a unified whiteness” that dates that process to the decades after World War I, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 93. For a critique of this periodization, see Eric Arnesen, “Whiteness and the Historian’s Imagination” International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (Oct. 2001), 3-32.

⁸ Heinz Kloss has noted that the image of the United States as “united by one language and one culture” has “always been illusory.” The American Bilingual Tradition (Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, 1977), vii. As Joshua A. Fishman has argued, “organized language consciousness, language loyalty, and language maintenance” outside of English was often initiated by particular immigrant groups. As much is true in this case, though, the version of German language maintenance via public schools that emerged was not a simple democratic “triumph” but instead was, to an extent, “superimposed” on Milwaukee’s German community by the School Board. Language Loyalty in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by American Ethnic and Religious Groups (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton & Co., 1966), 25.

⁹ Kyle P. Steele, “A Yankee Whig in Milwaukee: Rufus King, Jr. and the City’s First Public Schools,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 101, no. 4 (Summer 2018), 19-21.

¹⁰ Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin, 1846 (Madison, Wisconsin Territory: Simeon Mills, Territorial Printer, 1846), 84.

¹¹ German migration to the Midwest preceded and was precipitated by the revolution that began that same decade and was further encouraged by interventions by the state of Wisconsin aimed at attracting eastern European migrants in order to achieve “prosperity and growth,” Theodore C. Blegen, “The Competition of the Northwestern States for Immigrants,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 3, no. 1 (Sept. 1919), 3-4; Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900 (New York: The Free Press, 1970), 44. For a richer history of German migration to the Midwest and the German character of Milwaukee in particular, see also Roger E. Wyman, “Wisconsin Ethnic Groups and the Election of 1890,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 51, no. 4 (Summer, 1968), 269-93.

¹² Steele, “A Yankee Whig in Milwaukee,” 14-27.

¹³ King quoted in Steele, “A Yankee Whig in Milwaukee,” 23.

¹⁴ By 1850, the German-born population of Wisconsin reached 38,064, representing 11.3 percent of the total state population and 32.4 percent of the foreign-born population. Kate Asaphine Levi, How Wisconsin Came by Its Large German Element (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing Company, State Printers, 1892).

¹⁵ Annual Report of the Board of School Commissioners of the City of Milwaukee, 1848-1849.

¹⁶ Bettina Goldberg, “The German-English Academy, the National German-American Teachers’ Seminary, and the Public School System in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1851-1919,” in German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917, ed. Henry Geitz, Jurgen Heideking, and Jurgen Herbst (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 177-92.

¹⁷ Petty, “Immigrant Languages and Education,” 42.

¹⁸ Goldberg, “The German-English Academy,” 179.

¹⁹ Decision 72, March 1850, Series 600, Volume 1, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: Appeal Decisions, 1850-1906, Wisconsin Historical Society.

²⁰ Decision 414, Feb. 17, 1854, Series 600, Volume 1, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: Appeal Decisions, 1850-1906, Wisconsin Historical Society.

²¹ Patrick Donnelly, History of Milwaukee Public Schools (Milwaukee: The Evening Wisconsin Company, 1894), 9.

²² Carlos Kevin Blanton, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 4.

²³ Petty, “Immigrant Languages and Education,” 42.

²⁴ “Superintendent’s Report,” in Proceedings of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, May 1895 to May 1896, 78.

²⁵ “Superintendent’s Report, May 1895 to May 1896”; Donnelly, History of Milwaukee Public Schools, 25.

²⁶ Carlos Blanton demonstrated that in Texas, private and parochial schools offering bilingual education “fed the bilingual tradition and enabled it to flourish against the will of hostile public officials,” The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 27. A parallel story emerged in Milwaukee, where the availability of German-language education forced the hand of public officials to introduce, on their own terms, a German language course in the public school system. For a discussion on the cultural background of the broader population of Wisconsin, see Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 122, and Levi, How Wisconsin Came by Its Large German Element.

²⁷ Frank Abial Flower, History of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Date (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Genealogical Society, 1881), 531.

²⁸ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1869; Goldberg, “The German-English Academy,” 183.

²⁹ “The German and English Academy: Its History and Present Condition” (Milwaukee: Sentinel Printing Company, 1871); Wisconsin Historical Society Pamphlet Collection (99-5239), Rare Books Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, 3; Goldberg, “The German-English Academy, 185.

³⁰ Goldberg, “The German-English Academy,”180.

³¹ Goldberg, “The German-English Academy, 183.

³² Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1873-1874.

³³ Robert James Ulrich, “The Bennett Law of 1889: Education and Politics in Wisconsin” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1965), 26.

³⁴ School census data in Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1876-1877. Enrollment statistics show that the public school also outpaced private school enrollment significantly in the late 1860s and into the 1870s. Conrad E. Patzer, Public Education in Wisconsin (Madison, WI: State Superintendent Office, 1924), 542; Donnelly, History of Milwaukee Public Schools, 25; Ulrich, “The Bennett Law of 1889,” 65. Cost-saving was a statewide concern during the decade, as State Superintendent Samuel Fallows would establish a textbook publishing wing of the state government in order to provide “uniformity” and save on external textbook purchases. Report of the Text-Book Commission to the Legislature of Wisconsin: on Uniformity, Number and Cost of Text-Books for the Public Schools of the State (Madison, WI: David Atwood, State Printer, 1879).

³⁵ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1872, pp. 7, 112.

³⁶ On the Prussian system as the gold standard for school reform dating back to the 1830s, particularly the standardized and centralized organization of schooling, see Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, especially 72-73.

³⁷ Annual Report, 1872, p. 59.

³⁸ The Annual Report included a table of per-pupil education costs for fifteen other cities, including Cleveland, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, Washington, Newark, Buffalo, Hartford, Brooklyn, Portland, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. Annual Report, 1873.

³⁹ In fact, Milwaukee prospered during the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent depression. The weak market allowed the city to “seize a share of the national commercial and manufacturing markets.” Kate Foss-Mollan, “Waiting for Water: Service Discrimination and Polish Neighborhoods in Milwaukee, 1870-1920,” Michigan Historical Review 25, no. 2 (Fall 1999), 35; Bayrd Still, Milwaukee: The History of a City (Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1948), 323.

⁴⁰ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1874, pp. 15-16. Emphasis in original.

⁴¹ Goldberg, “The German-English Academy,” 185.

⁴² Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1889, p. 26.

⁴³ Superintendent James MacAlister quoted in Goldberg, “The German-English Academy,” 185.

⁴⁴ Annual Report, 1873, pp. 40, 112.

⁴⁵ “Oral Instruction for the First Year with Classes Composed of Pupils of German Parentage and for the First Two Years with Classes Composed of Chiefly of Pupils of Other Than German Parentage”; Annual Report, 1874.

⁴⁶ Samuel Fallows, Special Report on Compulsory Education (Madison, WI: Atwood & Culver, Department of Public Instruction, 1873).

⁴⁷ A. M. Thomson, “Shall Our System of Public Instruction Be Maintained?,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Feb. 17, 1873.

⁴⁸ Kleppner, The Cross of Culture, 8-9.

⁴⁹ Patzer, Public Education in Wisconsin, 76.

⁵⁰ J. B. Thayer, Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of the State of Wisconsin for the Years 1887-1888, quoted in Louise Phelps Kellogg, “The Bennett Law in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 2, no. 1 (Sept. 1918), 3.

⁵¹ William F. Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 10, no. 4 (June 1927), 376. Whyte drew a direct connection between State Superintendent Thayer’s 1888 Biennial Report and Hoard’s championing of educational reform, especially the language used in his inaugural address to the legislature.

⁵² Message of Governor William D. Hoard, Jan. 10, 1889, quoted in Kellogg, “The Bennett Law in Wisconsin,” 4; Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign,” 376-77.

⁵³ Kellogg, “The Bennett Law in Wisconsin,” 4.

⁵⁴ David P. Thelen, The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 10-11.

⁵⁵ There is a historical debate over the conditions under which the Bennett Law passed unanimously. William F. Vilas, a Democratic politician, attributed it to “skill or chance, that it escaped all attention.” Ulrich focuses instead on the legislative predecessor, the Pond Bill, which was abandoned in the face of initial German upheaval. Other historians have analyzed its unanimous passage as a sign that Democrats were merely motivated by political expediency in their later opposition to the Bennett Law. Ulrich, “The Bennett Law,” 165; John Coit Spooner, “Senator J. C. Spooner on Compulsory Education. From His Speech at the West Side Turner Hall,” Milwaukee, Friday, Oct. 3, 1890 (Milwaukee: J. C. Spooner, 1890), Wisconsin Historical Society Pamphlet Collection (61-795), 1; Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 123; Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign in Wisconsin,” 377.

⁵⁶ Michael J. Bennett, “The Bennett Law,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 26, 1889; Kellogg, “The Bennett Law in Wisconsin,” 4-5; Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 125; William F. Vilas, “The “Bennett Law” in Wisconsin,” Forum 12 (1891), 198. The bill gained its colloquial name the “Bennett Law” not because it was written by Representative Michael Bennett, but merely because he was the representative to introduce the bill. Bennett defended the law in a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, accusing opponents of “misrepresent[ing]” the process by which the law was passed.

⁵⁷ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, April 18, 1889; Thomas C. Hunt, “The Bennett Law of 1890: Focus of Conflict between Church and State in Education,” Journal of Church and State 23, no. 1 (1981), 70.

⁵⁸ The Laws of Wisconsin, Except City Charters and their Amendments, Passed at the Biennial Session of the Legislature of 1889, Together with the Joint Resolutions and Memorials (Madison, WI: Democrat Printing Company, State Printers, 1889), 731.

⁵⁹ Christian Koerner, “The Bennett Law and the German Protestant Parochial Schools of Wisconsin” (Milwaukee: Germania Publishing Co., 1890), 11; “The Bennett Law” (Milwaukee: Anti-Bennett State Central Committee, 1890), 4.

⁶⁰ Cody Dodge Ewert, Making Schools American: Nationalism and the Origins of Modern Educational Politics (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2022), 9.

⁶¹ Stratton, Education for Empire, 7.

⁶² “Maintenance of German,” translated from the Milwaukee Turn-Zeitung, reprinted in Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Sept. 8, 1889; Milwaukee Journal, June 24, 1889; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, July 30, 1889.

⁶³ “The Church and the State,” Wisconsin State Register, June 29, 1889. For reference, the 1888 gubernatorial election saw a turnout of 354,714 voters statewide—70,000 voters would represent nearly 20 percent of the total electorate in the upcoming Gubernatorial election of 1890. “The Wisconsin Blue Book” (Madison, WI: Industrial Commission, 1889).

⁶⁴ “The Bennett Law,” 1890, 4-6; Koerner, “The Bennett Law.”

⁶⁵ Scrapbook: Bennett Law, Wisconsin, 1889-1890, Newspaper Clippings, Madison, WI, Wisconsin Historical Society (BV629 S37), 3.

⁶⁶ According to one newspaper article, both Catholic and Lutheran Germans were prepared to challenge the constitutionality of the Bennett Law in the state supreme court. “Only Part of It,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, July 15, 1889; “The Church and the State,” Wisconsin State Register, June 29, 1889; quote from Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 124.

⁶⁷ Rev. Theodore Clifton, “Milwaukee and Wisconsin,” Congregationalist, Sept. 4, 1890.

⁶⁸ The Columbia, reprinted in “After the School Board,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 25, 1889.

⁶⁹ “More Light on the Underlying Principles of the Bennett Law,” Milwaukee: Catholic State Central Anti-Bennett Law Committee, 1890, Wisconsin Historical Society Pamphlet Collection (61-795).

⁷⁰ “Germans Take Action,” Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 9, 1890.

⁷¹ Wisconsin State Register, Jan. 11, 1890.

⁷² William Dempster Hoard, “Statement in Support of the Bennett Law,” unpublished, W. D. Hoard Papers (Mss. 232). For an overview on the Protestant “crusade” against Catholicism and the origins of nativism, see Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Gloucester, MA: MacMillan Company, 1938).

⁷³ Spooner, “Spooner on Compulsory Education,” 2.

⁷⁴ “Stand By It! The Bennett Law Analyzed,” unattributed pamphlet in the W. D. Hoard Papers in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives (Mss. 232), 1.

⁷⁵ Ewert, Making Schools American, 6.

⁷⁶ “The Political Situation in Wisconsin,” Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 26, 1889. The Journal continued: “The farmers elected [Governor Hoard] before and he will look to the same source for reelection. Nor is there any likelihood they will fail him.” Hoard himself was an agricultural man, having, prior to his bid for governor, founded the publication Hoard’s Dairyman, a Wisconsin periodical on all things dairy.

⁷⁷ Spooner, “Spooner on Compulsory Education,” 2; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 29, 1890.

⁷⁸ “Enemies of the Common School,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Feb. 7, 1890.

⁷⁹ Hunt, “The Bennett Law of 1890,” 71.

⁸⁰ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 9, 1889.

⁸¹ “Maintenance of German,” translated from the Milwaukee Turn-Zeitung, reprinted in Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Sept. 8, 1889.

⁸² Janesville Gazette, reprinted in “Catholic Priest Approves the Bennett Law,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Feb. 17, 1890.

⁸³ “Catholic Priest Approves the Bennett Law.”

⁸⁴ Wisconsin Democratic Bennett Law League, “Address of Democratic Bennett Law League,” Milwaukee, 1890 (pam. 61-794), 3.

⁸⁵ “It’s a Good Law,” The Sunday Sentinel, Feb. 9, 1890, 3.

⁸⁶ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 29, 1890.

⁸⁷ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 7, 1890; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 23, 1890. Peck’s nomination was by no means guaranteed. The Democratic Party initially considered nominating a German-born candidate if the Republican Party had done so. When Republicans opted instead for a native-born candidate, the Democratic Party felt less compelled to appeal to the German population of Milwaukee through identity and instead centered its campaign on opposition to the Bennett Law as an explicit defense of German culture and freedom.

⁸⁸ Theodore Pappas, “George W. Peck and the Political Revolution of 1890” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1965), 6.

⁸⁹ Although turnout overall was down, Peck received 53 percent of the vote in Milwaukee, the first time a Democratic candidate had captured a majority in over fifteen years. The cultural breakdown was just as clear: German-majority wards in the city voted 51 percent in favor of Peck, a major shift in voting behavior since the last election in 1887. Milwaukee Journal, March 25, 1890; Hunt, “The Bennett Law of 1890,” 75; Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 128; Milwaukee Journal, April 1, 1890.

⁹⁰ Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 129.

⁹¹ Bayrd Still, History of Milwaukee, Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1948, 297.

⁹² Quoted in Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign in Wisconsin,” 21-22.

⁹³ Wisconsin State Journal, April 3, 1890.

⁹⁴ For a more detailed analysis of the political shifts taking place statewide, see Ulrich, “The Bennett Law,” esp. Appendices, 521-40.

⁹⁵ Horace S. Merrill, William Freeman Vilas: Doctrinaire Democrat (Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1954), 162.

⁹⁶ Laws of Wisconsin, 730.

⁹⁷ Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign in Wisconsin,” 386.

⁹⁸ La Crosse Chronicle, reprinted in “The Mayor of Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Journal, July 21, 1890.

⁹⁹ Neenah City Times, reprinted in “The Mayor of Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Journal, July 21, 1890.

¹⁰⁰ Juneau Telephone, reprinted in “The Mayor of Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Journal, July 21, 1890.

¹⁰¹ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Aug. 30, 1890.

¹⁰² Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 27, 1890.

¹⁰³ “The Democratic Bennett Law League Meeting,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 20, 1890.

¹⁰⁴ According to historian William Whyte, “Nils P. Haugen was left to tell the tale of his party’s overthrow.” Whyte, “The Bennett Law Campaign,” 390.

¹⁰⁵ Ulrich, “The Bennett Law,” 490.

¹⁰⁶ Quoted in Jensen, Winning of the Midwest, 5.

¹⁰⁷ “The Wisconsin Blue Book” (Madison, WI: Industrial Commission, 1893).

¹⁰⁸ Newspaper articles on the “German question” or the Bennett Law appeared in most Wisconsin cities. Aside from Milwaukee, Cedarburg grappled with the intent of the law in an 1889 article, “English and German,” reprinted in the Milwaukee Journal, Aug. 16, 1889. The debate also appeared in the Manitowoc County Chronicle, where the editor saw no issues with the implementation of the law, reprinted in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Sept. 26, 1889. The Manitowoc Pilot, a decidedly Democratic newspaper, called the law “low demagoguery.” “The Bennett Law,” reprinted in the Milwaukee Journal, Aug. 16, 1889. A Watertown man wrote the Sentinel in November 1889 to defend the use of state power in language education. The Weyauwega Chronicle touted the law as “a good one” in November 1889. The Oshkosh Northwestern defended, in a bad faith reading, the Bennett Law as “not requir[ing] private and parochial schools to teach the English language.” Nov. 15, 1889. The Wisconsin State Register out of Portage reported on a response by Governor Hoard to a letter to the editor published in the Monroe Sentinel, Dec. 1889.

¹⁰⁹ Richard H. Zeitlin, Germans in Wisconsin (Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 8.

¹¹⁰ Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism, 13-14.

¹¹¹ Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004), 183.

¹¹² William A. Bullough, Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age: The Evolution of an Urban Institution (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974), 16-17, 54.

¹¹³ Proceedings of the School Board, May 1896 to May 1897, 252.

¹¹⁴ Proceedings, May 1896 to May 1897, 253; Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1896, p. 37.

¹¹⁵ The recommendation came from a committee of one hundred appointed citizens that sought to improve “the education and material welfare of [Milwaukee].” Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1897, p. 33. That recommendation was first put forth by a report by the Polish Educational Society, The Polish Language in the Public Schools, Milwaukee: Polish Educational Society, 1896, p. 1. The approximate figure of 8,000 Polish students is derived from The Polish Language in the Public Schools, while the figure of 19,618 total students enrolled in private and parochial schools is taken from the Annual Report from 1897.

¹¹⁶ Annual Report, 1897, p. 33.

¹¹⁷ Annual Report, 1897, pp. 33, 34, 80, 81.

¹¹⁸ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1905, pp. 25, 102.

¹¹⁹ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1913, pp. 20, 121.

¹²⁰ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1897, p. 34.

¹²¹ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1914-15, p. 53.

¹²² Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1913.

¹²³ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1918, p. 10.

¹²⁴ Annual Report of the School Board of the City of Milwaukee, 1917, pp. 29, 33, 34.