Profile of Green County, "Wisconsin Communities"

SCHMIDT: Have you ever heard a piece of cheese? If not, listen to a story wherein a leading role is played by cheese. This is a story of cheese and its lives in the dairy industry, of cheese and the people who make it, sell it, and eat it. This is the story of the Swiss people who came to Wisconsin transplanting nearly everything they held dear except the mountains. Listen to our story and if you hear a sound you can't identify, you may be the first person to hear a piece of cheese.

[yodeling]

ANNOUNCER: The Wisconsin College of the Air presents the story of Green County, part four of a series entitled "Wisconsin Communities." These recorded programs are designed to show the relationship between people and places, why people came here, why they stayed to form a community. Here now is your narrator and 00:01:00producer, Carl Schmidt.

SCHMIDT: A piece of cheese went out in the mail one day and out of the mail came a smell; out of the smell came a story. And here's how the story is told by John Burkhardt, the postmaster of Monroe, the county seat of Green County.

BURKHARDT: In January 1935, the--Dr. Kelly from Independence, Iowa prescribed limburger cheese for a lady patient. So the local firm, the Badger [unintelligible] Cheese Company, shipped some limburger cheese to Iowa, due to the fact that Limburger cheese was not available in that particular area of the country. The limburger cheese became rather stinky, and the rural carrier claimed he became sick, so when he got back to the post office, he reported this incidence to Warren Miller, who was postmaster at Independence, Iowa. In due time the local post office received a letter stating that, hereafter, when limburger cheese was accepted for mailing, it must be properly wrapped so there 00:02:00would be no odor coming from the parcel. A few days later, another parcel with cheese was shipped, which was examined here before it was dispatched, and apparently everything was all right. Lo and behold, about three weeks--three days later the cheese came back intact. I took this package of cheese, wrapped it up, and sent it to then postmaster general Jim Farley at Washington D.C. So it wasn't long that the Associated Press, the United Press, got a hold of this story that I had sent this limburger cheese to Jim Farley, and immediately calls began to come in, wondering what I was going to do next. And at the spur of the moment I says I was going to challenge the postmaster Warren Miller to a sniffing contest. And they asked me where it was to be held, and I said, "Well, probably halfway would be Dubuque, Iowa." And of course this contest was held, 00:03:00and we took our limburger cheese with rye bread and plenty of the amber fluid over to Dubuque. And, oh, we had a grand time and limburger cheese won out.

SCHMIDT: Limburger won out. That story might be called a symbol of winning out, a lighthearted symbol of Green County's rise to fame as a leader in the production of foreign-type cheese: limburger, Swiss, and brick. A part of that rise to prominence was made by people working toward a better life. They came a long way, these people, literally and figuratively. They brought a language like this.

[two voices conversing in Swiss German]

SCHMIDT: They brought with them music, like this.

[yodeling]

SCHMIDT: They brought the knowhow and the desire to make cheese. They brought colorful customs and costumes. They brought tasty foods such as this one:

AUGSBERGER: Fasnachtschüechli.

SCHMIDT:--with a name as delicious as its taste.

AUGSBERGER: Fasnachtschüechli.

SCHMIDT: They were called Glarners. They came from canton Glarus in Switzerland. A little more than a century ago, canton Glarus was overcrowded and poverty-stricken, or as it was put by Carl Marty Sr., a Monroe citizen who was born in Switzerland:

MARTY: It was hard times in Switzerland. It was during the 40's there: you know, upheaval here and there, and it got so bad that the council of the old city of 00:05:00Glarus got together, and got two men that understood the language a little and knew something about farming and so on, to send them out to look for a territory.

SCHMIDT: But the decision by the canton Glarus government to send surplus citizens to America wasn't in itself enough to assure the establishment of a cheese industry in Green County. There were other factors, factors of chance. They might have gone to Kansas or Missouri, Illinois or Iowa, or elsewhere in Wisconsin. If it hadn't been for lead miners, there would be no Swiss cheese industry in Green County. Paradoxical? Here's the story as told by John Schindler, doctor by profession, historian by avocation.

SCHINDLER: Previous to 1845 there was no dairying here, there were no Swiss here. The way the Swiss got here was because the lead road existed from Mineral 00:06:00Point to Milwaukee. It was because of this road that the two experts from the canton of Glarus that the canton sent out in 1845 to find a colony site; it was because of this road that these two experts came through Green County. They stopped in the New Glarus woods and walked down through a path that the animals used in going from the woods down to a creek to get water. They walked down this path, looked the site over, and decided that this was a very suitable location for a colony. If the lead road had been, let us say, five miles farther north or five miles farther south, it's quite probable that the Swiss cheese-making industry might have started in Iowa, or Missouri, or Illinois, and those states would then have had the Swiss cheese industry and the Swiss dairying which 00:07:00produces more milk per square mile than any other dairying area in the United States.

SCHMIDT: But the Glarners didn't bring a cheese industry with them to Green County; they didn't even bring a cow. At first they tried wheat, but the hills were unsuited to it, and the rains often washed the seeds away before they had a chance to sprout. The hills wore down and warned of barrenment. Then the chinch bugs came and ruined the wheat that had survived. New Glarus was glummer than Old Glarus. They finally got cows; a herd of them was chased in to Green County in 1846, and the Swiss colonists bought, at twelve dollars a head, enough for one cow per family. That didn't make enough for an industry, but it was a step, the first of many. This is one of the places they were heading for.

[sounds of factory floor]

SCHMIDT: Mr. Kubly, could you tell us what process we're witnessing here at the 00:08:00Lakeshire-Marty Cheese Company?

KUBLY: Well, this is a Swiss cheese manufacturing operation that we're looking at here. This milk that you're looking at here came in around seven o'clock this morning, and within a few minutes, the cheese will be taken out of this kettle. The--each one of these kettles you see here holds approximately three thousand pounds of milk. We put about twenty five hundred pounds of milk to make a cheese, which will run one hundred seventy-five to one hundred eighty pounds. What comes out of the kettle will be Swiss cheese. Whatever is left will be whey, which goes back to the farmer, and in most cases is used as hog food.

SCHMIDT: I see, and then the presses over here at the far side of the room is where it's first boxed. Is that right?

KUBLY: Well, that's right. The--the curd is taken out of the kettle, and then it is put into the cheese hoops over there, and then it's put under about two 00:09:00thousand pounds of pressure, and under the pressure, of course, the cheese is molded into a round wheel of Swiss.

SCHMIDT: This wheel of Swiss will stay on the shelves of the Swiss room until tomorrow, when it goes to the brine room into a big brine vat, where it stays a few days to absorb some salt and to develop a rind. Then it spends a few days in the cold room. It is taken from there to a warm room where eye formation occurs, and where it's turned and salted periodically. The law requires the cheese be kept in the factory for six weeks in summer and eight weeks in winter. The cheesemaker is usually paid on a percentage basis, and he can earn up to twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Back now to the Swiss room and Ray Kubly, manager of the Lakeshire-Marty Company. I wonder now if we could chat with your cheesemaker. Would you introduce us to him?

KUBLY: Why, yes, I'll do that. Carl, this is our head cheesemaker, Karl Miller.

MILLER: How do you do?

SCHMIDT: How do you do? Mr. Miller, could you tell me where most of your milk comes from that you use to make cheese?

MILLER: Right around Monroe.

SCHMIDT: Right around Monroe. About how much milk, Mr. Miller, does it require to keep you in operation for one day here in the Swiss making?

MILLER: Well, we got around twenty-two thousand pounds right now. We make nine wheels a day.

SCHMIDT: You make nine wheels a day. And how many times are deliveries made?

MILLER: Just once a day, in the morning.

SCHMIDT: Every morning, that much milk comes in to be processed.

MILLER: Right.

SCHMIDT: Mr. Miller, are you from Switzerland?

MILLER: You bet.

SCHMIDT: How long have you been here?

MILLER: I'd say twenty-one years now.

SCHMIDT: Twenty-one years. Did you come directly to Monroe?

MILLER: No, I went out west first, out to Californy.

SCHMIDT: Did you make cheese there?

MILLER: No, I was farming there.

SCHMIDT: And how long have you been here?

MILLER: Now, I'm here for eighteen years.

SCHMIDT: Do you find many things about Green County and Monroe and New Glarus 00:11:00that remind you of Switzerland?

MILLER: Oh, it's a wonderful place--Green County; that's all I can say. I always liked it and I make my living here now and so forth.

SCHMIDT: The Swiss room of a modern cheese factory. That's an example of where the Glarner colonists were headed inevitably when the first herd of cows came into Green County. A glimpse at the early cheesemakers now, their pastimes and their humor, the boisterous humor and the contagious laughter of the hardworking people. A man who came to America at the age of thirteen and grew up with the Green County cheese industry is Carl Marty Sr. He's retired now, and he's documenting the lives of early cheesemakers with his paintbrush. Here he is, recounting the story told by one of his paintings.

MARTY: Oh, there's maybe six, seven neighboring cheese factories, you know. They were close by and not too far. That was the [Swiss name], and always one amongst 00:12:00them had a little hand organ, you know, from Switzerland. And then the packing room at the cheese factory where they made the tubs, you know, where they had the [unintelligible], there was lots of room there to dance, and there they danced. And then some Swiss girls come around, you know, or there happened to be around, or their women if they had a woman, and so on, and had a wonderful time with a keg of beer--bread and cheese and a keg of beer. And then that lasted for a few hours in the afternoon. And then they all had to pull out and go home and turn their cheese and get ready for the evening's cheese, see. But it was a good pastime for them and a necessary pastime. Some of them poor devils. Some of them were bachelors, you know. They were all alone with that hard work, and it really was a real recreation--just a little keg of beer and [unintelligible].

SCHMIDT: As the appearance of that cheesemaker's party is mirrored in Carl Marty's painting, so the sound of his laughter is echoed in his voice.

MARTY: That reminds me of a little joke. A fellow had a wife, you know, and then 00:13:00it was his turn to have a keg of beer, and [unintelligible], and the cheesemaker went to town, or the farmer into town with a load of cheese, and he tell him, "You go to the brewery and get me an eighth of beer for next Sunday," and the wife says--of course in Swiss it sounds a whole lot better--"one eighth of beer; I think a quarter would be plenty." She had the wrong measure, and he says, "All right, if you insist, make it a quarter."

SCHMIDT: The joke of a people who know their cheese, beer, and their fractions.

[yodeling]

SCHMIDT: The progress from a lonely cheese kettle over an open fire to the long rows of modern steam-jacketed kettles was remarkably steady and free from 00:14:00disastrous setbacks. The depression of the thirties was but a momentary slowing-up. The continuation of this trend is being assured largely by modernizing farms and factories. People of Green County have an intense pride in their cheese industry, a pride that is reflected every five years in the largest dairy festival in America: Cheese Day, with a full day program consisting of a two-hour parade, in which some fifteen bands participate, exhibitions by the Turnklub, a Swiss athletic organization, and of course, performances by the New Glarus yodelers. Here's Dwight Crandall, Cheese Day chairman for this year, telling about how many people are expected for Cheese Day, and what these people can expect.

CRANDALL: In 1940, it was estimated that we had all the way from fifty to seventy thousand people here in Monroe. This year, we are planning on having 00:15:00ninety thousand people. The--in the past, there has been and still is a definite problem as to how to take care of that number of people, and see that they all get some Swiss cheese. But we feel that this year we have it under control. We're planning on having cheese sandwiches available to the public from eight o'clock in the morning until eight thirty at night. We are expecting to cut up approximately 15,000 pounds of Swiss cheese alone.

SCHMIDT: And what day is Cheese Day in Monroe?

CRANDALL: September 9, 1950.

SCHMIDT: I'm sorry, we missed that. Again, please?

CRANDALL: September 9, 1950.

SCHMIDT: That's a date to remember, a day to be in Green County. You'll learn there some reasons for a belief, a belief that cheese is the finest food on earth. You'll learn by tasting.

[yodeling]

SCHMIDT: There's a sound as distinctively Swiss as the taste of Swiss cheese. It's a song without words that seeks an echo, a serenade that comes back from the mountain. These yodelers left the mountains behind when they came to Green County, but none of the gusto is gone from their voices. New Glarus is the yodeling center of Green County. If you ever visit this town and meet a member of the Yodeling Club, ask him about the origin of yodeling. His answer will be something like this:

GROSENBACHER: Well, I think that was just because they felt like it, for one thing. They were happy, and when you're happy you feel like singing, so most of those people didn't know any particular songs, and they just sang something, and when they--they sang, they could hear the echo and then they liked that, you know.

SCHMIDT: Paul Grosenbacher, a dairyman who came to Green County from Switzerland 00:17:00twenty-one years ago. The yodel served as more than a means of enjoyment, however, for there were cattle in the Alps. Did they come when the farmer yodeled?

BUESSER: Right away.

SCHMIDT: Were they given anything as a reward for coming?

BUESSER: Yes, they were given a little bit salt when they were coming into the barn.

SCHMIDT: The answers from--

BUESSER: Oswald Buesser.

SCHMIDT: --president of the New Glarus Yodelers Club, a resident of this country for twenty-two years. A more common method for calling cattle in Switzerland was independent of the human voice, requiring instead an instrument as long as a man, looking somewhat like a small tree minus branches plus polish. Given this instrument with enough lung power and practice, you could make a sound like this:

[Alpine horn playing with orchestra]

SCHMIDT: The Alpine horn, once a necessary piece of farm equipment, now a collector's item.

[performance of William Tell play]

SCHMIDT: If, on a Labor Day afternoon, you should come to Elmer's Grove, just outside New Glarus, this is what you might hear.

[performance of William Tell play]

SCHMIDT: It's a portion of the William Tell pageant, perhaps the most famous bit of Swiss culture brought to Green County. The German dialogue you hear is between Gilbert Ott, who plays William Tell in both German and English, and Paul Grosenbacher, who plays the tyrant Gessler in the German version. Mr. Grosenbacher, who spent his boyhood years in Switzerland, told us what the William Tell play means to the Swiss.

GROSENBACHER: Well, it is true William Tell is not recorded in history, but to every child in Switzerland, William Tell was still there; he was still William Tell. I mean, William Tell is to us about like George Washington to the American children.

SCHMIDT: The Swiss George Washington, part history and part myth, a symbol of Switzerland's winning of independence from Austria. You can see and hear a cultural heritage. You can also taste it, and this time we don't mean cheese. We mean--

AUGSBERGER: Fasnachtschüechli.

SCHMIDT: --a tasty food with a tasty name. Mrs. Lena Augsberger can bake the food as well as she pronounces its name. If you hear it before you taste it, you'll probably ask where the name originated.

AUGSBERGER: It comes from a three day holiday in Switzerland where--that's 00:20:00celebrated mostly in Basel and Zurich. It's a--would be called a masquerade or a carnival; everybody dresses up and they have parades, which is called Fasnacht, and that's where the Fasnachtschüechli comes from. Everybody makes Fasnachtschüechlis by the bushel basketsful, you might say, and they're celebrating.

SCHMIDT: They made them by the bushel, and if you've tasted them, you know why. Here's the formula.

LENA: Fasnachtschüechlis are made--take six eggs, and to each egg, a tablespoon of heavy cream, and a pinch of salt, and beat that well and add flour until you have a nice firm dough. Then you leave it stand overnight, covered in a bowl and leave it stand in your refrigerator, or any cool place. The next day, you take 00:21:00it out, and cut pieces as big as a walnut and roll them out as thin as paper. After you got them all rolled out, you fry them in deep hot fat, just quickly, turn them, and just fry them to a nice golden brown, and you can top them with sugar if you want to.

SCHMIDT: The results, if you follow Mrs. Lena Augsburger's instructions, is a delicate pastry, round in shape, and about four inches in diameter. Eat one and you'll feel capacity for dozens more.

[yodeling]

SCHMIDT: These have been examples of the Swiss cultural heritage being preserved 00:22:00in Green County. There's another side to the Green County picture, another side that's just as bright, only different.

[sounds of music, recreation]

SCHMIDT: These are the sounds of the Angle, Monroe's youth center. We visited the Angle during the rush hour at noon. We talked with Mr. Larry Kitchen, City Recreation Director. We're wondering, Mr. Kitchen, if you can tell us just what the Angle is.

KITCHEN: The Angle is Monroe's youth center, sponsored more or less by the city recreation department, and it was organized approximately four years ago. The Angle takes care of all the boys and girls from ninth grade through twelfth grade.

SCHMIDT: This position you hold as recreation director, that's rather a new 00:23:00thing, isn't it, for municipalities and communities to establish that type of position?

KITCHEN: Well, yes, it is new, although Milwaukee is perhaps, many know, has had recreation a good many years. But the movement is really in its infancy, because most communities are just beginning to recognize the fact of municipal recreation. Monroe, I think, being a leader for a community hiring a full time recreational director.

SCHMIDT: The Angle at noon is teaming with young students that come here to dance, and play ping pong and pool, and if they're from out of town, to eat their lunch. Many of them are taking an active part in the government of the Angle, such as the council members we talked with. Here at the Angle, we're speaking now to Carol Schindler, president of the Monroe Youth Council. Carol, could you tell us just what the function of the Monroe Youth Council is?

SCHINDLER: I'll try to, Mr. Schmidt. We are simply here to plan the activities for the coming month, or the coming few months. And I'd like to introduce to you a few of my council members here, members on the council with me, and have them 00:24:00explain the activities to you.

SCHMIDT: Fine.

SCHINDLER: The first council member is Jeannette Crane. Jeanette, would you like to tell him a little about the dances that we plan here?

CRANE: Well, we sponsor dances after every basketball game and football game, and a few times we have orchestras to play for them, and the money that we get from these dances is going for our new youth center.

SCHINDLER: Thank you, Jeanette. Sybil, could you tell us, Sybil Bloomer is next. Could you tell us a little about that new youth center, Sybil.

BLOOMER: We think we've taken a big step ahead now. We have a new youth center, we've started work on it. The boys are working Saturdays, and after school helping with the--working on the plastering, and getting cleaned up a little bit. We expect to move in the first of April, and we are busy earning money to 00:25:00buy new furniture. We expect to buy about five hundred dollars' worth of new furniture, as we can take almost nothing with us.

SCHINDLER: Thank you, Syb. I might add that we're very pleased to be making this step ahead. Ever since we started four years ago, we've been getting newer things, and finally, the latest thing is a permanent recreational director for Monroe, and now, a new youth center.

SCHMIDT: Let's leave the Angle now for just a few seconds. During this time, think about headaches, because that's what we'll talk about when we return. What do you do for a headache? Take an aspirin, probably. But an aspirin wouldn't help the kind of headache described to us at the Angle by Mr. Herbert T. Johnson, president of the Monroe School Board.

JOHNSON: Our big headache is the same headache that many communities have. The wartime crop of babies is now coming into the kindergarten and first grade. Our 00:26:00facilities are overcrowded, and we need additional space. It is the hope of the Monroe School Board that we will be able to expand our grade schools sufficiently, so that there will be one room for each grade and one teacher for each grade. At the present time, we are forced in many schools to have one teacher teaching two grades, and these two grades are all confined to one room.

SCHMIDT: Stand back from the Angle again, and look at the people you've met. Think of the things they've said. If you're from Monroe, you'll notice that something is missing. What about the Youth Cabin? Well, that's what we discussed with Henry Kundert, a man well-loved by the youngsters who enjoy the Cabin, because he devotes most of his leisure to making the Cabin more enjoyable. Back now to the Angle. Sitting beside me at the Angle now at lunch hour is Mr. Henry Kundert. I'm wondering, Mr. Kundert, if you could tell us something about the Youth Cabin. We've heard a lot about that since we've been in Monroe. Everyone 00:27:00seems very proud of it. I'm wondering if you could tell us who sponsors it and what some of its activities are.

KUNDERT: Yes, I think I can. It was sponsored by the Kiwanis Club. The idea originated about two years ago. I think Mr. Frank Hoffman was the originator of the idea, and had a great deal to do with it. It has really served a very, very fine purpose as far as the young people are concerned. It's out in a beautiful spot, a little woods, a little clearing, where activities of all kinds can be held. It'd be good for winter sports, for overnight camping, expeditions for the youngsters. There's room for some thirty youngsters there. We have a kitchen that's well-equipped and it is truly a beautiful spot.

[Kiwanis song is heard in the background]

UNIDENTIFIED: Splendid, splendid, in fact, I never heard such singing.

SCHMIDT: You're listening to a group of men having a good time. It's Thursday noon in Monroe, and the Kiwanis are holding their weekly meeting. They come here to eat, to sing, and to talk. One of the things they talk about is the Youth Cabin, because they're responsible for the existence of the Cabin. Let's listen to a fragment of the business meeting, a report on the status of the Cabin.

UNIDENTIFIED: The Cabin, as you remember, was dedicated last July, and as near as we can tell--we don't have an exact count--about 600 boys and girls of various organizations used the Cabin from July on till last fall.

SCHMIDT: Monroe's only service club, the Kiwanis Club is so called because of things like the Youth Cabin, because Kiwanians devote much of their spare time doing things without any expectation of personal return, others in the satisfaction that they're doing something good for the community. Well, for the past few minutes, you've heard about some of the things provided by adults to make the community a better place for the young people. Now here's something the young people provide to make the community a more enjoyable place, both for themselves and for their elders.

[band playing]

SCHMIDT: The Monroe High School Band, an 88-piece band with a fabulous record, a ten-year record of first place in the Class A field, and a three-year record of more first places than any other Wisconsin high school in solos and ensembles. Directed by Alan F. Barnard, the band averages one public performance per week every month of the year except August. Here's the band speaking for itself.

[band playing]

[band playing]

[band playing]

NARRATOR: The Monroe High School band has concluded the first portion of the story of Green County, Part 4 of a College of the Air Series entitled "Wisconsin Communities." Our recorded program will continue in a moment. This is the 00:33:00Wisconsin State Broadcasting Service. Here again is your narrator, Carl Schmidt.

SCHMIDT: A small community's most valuable investment has an alarming habit of growing up and leaving. They go away to school or to other jobs. Many of them don't return, and the investment is lost. In Monroe we talked with a man who went away for a while, but decided to return. His story contains at least a part of the answer to this question: "What must a community do to keep its young people home?" Alvin Babler left Green County to attend the University of Wisconsin. When he got his degree, he went to work for a large accounting firm in Detroit. The war interrupted his stay in Detroit and he entered the army. The end of the war left him at loose ends. He could go back to Detroit or back to Green County. This was his decision.

BABLER: After the war, of course, when I got out, there was a possibility of 00:34:00going back with Ernst and Ernst; living conditions in Detroit were crowded; the experience I had in Detroit previous to that time indicated that the helter and skelter of the city life, and the traveling time to and from work, and the lack of hospitality in the large city were the things that I didn't care for in living. And feeling that the--Monroe, the town that I knew so well, was a town that offered a shorter traveling time, living with people whom I liked, associating with people whom you know and understand, and the possibility of making a living to support my family as well, entered into my change and return to Monroe.

SCHMIDT: If you were planning to go into business in a community, you would probably talk with the businessmen of that community and ask quite a few questions. If you should ask Alvin Babler about economic opportunities for a young man in Monroe, this is the answer you would get.

BABLER: First of all, Monroe is a place where there is economic wealth, and as a result, income in itself is available, assuming the buying public can be unloosened from their money. So that the possibilities for making a living here, providing the right opportunities are available for the individual, are such that any young individual with an education and energy and initiative can find something if he so desires. There are possibilities of making millions elsewhere, but the close community effort that you find in a town of this size is much more gratifying, I think, than living in a town the size of Detroit.

SCHMIDT: A phrase that arose from our talk with Mr. Babler sent us again in a direction we already had explored to some extent. The phrase was "close community effort." There's an excellent example of close community effort in 00:36:00Monroe, but you aren't likely to realize just how excellent it is unless your house tries to burn down. Monroe happens to have a volunteer fire department. Now, there is a state law which says that any town containing more than 6,500 people must have a professional fire department, unless the volunteers can prove their ability to keep a step or two ahead of the community's requirements. One essential for keeping ahead is keeping in touch with new developments in firefighting technique. H. L. Sickinger, one of Monroe's three fire chiefs, went to a fire demonstration in which a new substance called "wet water" was used. He was so impressed that he incorporated it into his department immediately. Here is Mr Sickinger's account of the first fire subjected to wet water.

SICKINGER: The fire was going wonderful, and I was called at my home about twelve o'clock and told where the fire was, and I went down on the back street and met our boys right just before they got there. And I says, now don't use any 00:37:00other water, I says, I want to try this wet water. We got over there and we give it two switches, and the fire was out.

SCHMIDT: As Mr. Sickinger implied in his story, the water didn't run to the fire by itself. How about the volunteers who are busy at other jobs when the sirens sound?

SICKINGER: They all leave and come, because every man gets a dollar and a half for the first hour, and if he is docked from his regular work, he has plenty pay for his labor.

[sound of newspaper presses]

SCHMIDT: If you were in the same room with this sound when a fire siren sounded, you didn't hear the siren, but you knew there was a fire. This sound is the same for a wedding as it is for a fire, but if you are in the same building with this sound, you know who was married and whose house burned. No sound is closer than this one, the pulse of the community. Yet, few people ever hear it. It is a 00:38:00sound you can hear in most any community, but the result in every case is different. In Green County, the result of this sound is the Monroe Evening Times. A newspaper grows with a community. As a community starts from scratch, so does a newspaper. This was the answer when we asked Emery O'Dell, publisher of the Times how it was to start a paper in Monroe fifty years ago.

O'DELL: Pretty serious business, boy, because I wasn't an editor, I was a printer. I come back here as a printer and then I branched out on the news end. That is mighty convenient to have been a printer. In the old days the editors came through the back room. There were no schools of journalism in those big shacks. No, no chance to get any training in college.

SCHMIDT: Starting a paper in Green County fifty years ago was serious business, because at that time the men with money to lend didn't take a newspaper seriously. They took it so lightly that Emery O'Dell had to get twenty signers in order to borrow the $200 he needed. Mr. O'Dell still has that note. From its vantage point on the second floor of the modern Times building, that note is the proudest bit of paper in Wisconsin.

[sound of newspaper presses]

RECEPTIONIST: Your appointment is for 10:30, Mr. Carson. The elevator is straight ahead and to your right.

CARSON: To the right. Thank you.

RECEPTIONIST: Go to the third floor waiting room and Dr. Marbry will call for you there. Record room, please.

UNIDENTIFIED: Records.

RECEPTIONIST: Case history on John W. Carson, please. Send to Dr. Marbry.

UNIDENTIFIED: John W. Carson. History to Marbry. Thank you.

RECEPTIONIST: Good morning. Monroe Clinic.

SCHMIDT: Good morning. Monroe Clinic. Good morning from the place which is second only to the cheese industries, an object of Green County pride. Dr. William Gnagi, chief of staff at the clinic, got the idea back in the '30s.

GNAGI: At that time, I had been practicing in Monroe with my father, and up till 1934 had been doing nearly everything that a general practitioner does. I had become very much interested in the group practice of medicine and thought it would be a fine thing for this community, and Dr. Schindler, who was practicing in New Glarus at that time in the same way I was practicing in Monroe, had referred several surgical patients to me. I had come to think a great deal of Dr. Schindler, and had lots of respect for his diagnostic ability and the way he handled medical patients, and I, being trained in surgery, thought he might be a fine man to work into a group with. So one morning after we had finished surgery, I asked Dr. Schindler how he would like to come to Monroe and start a 00:41:00clinic and practice with me. His answer was, "Fine. When should I come?" That was the beginning of the Gnagi-Schindler Clinic. Dr. Schindler and I practiced as the Gnagi-Schindler Clinic with the addition of one other man in eye, ear, nose and throat, Dr. Bristow, until 1939, at which time the Monroe Clinic was organized. At that time we took in with us to form the Monroe Clinic, Dr. W. G. Bear, Dr. L. E. Creasy, and Dr. N. E. Bear. And since that time we have added several other men to our clinic staff. The clinic grew rapidly and within a short time we added Dr. Leslie Kindschi to our staff in internal medicine, and Dr. Fred Kundert, who was a native of New Glarus, to our staff in eye, ear, nose and throat.

SCHMIDT: The result has been to make Monroe a medical center. The significance of being a medical center was emphasized by Harold Scherer, the Clinic's 00:42:00business manager.

SCHERER: At the present time, the Monroe Clinic draws about 85% of its volume from outside of the city of Monroe.

SCHMIDT: What does that mean in the number of patients, say, per month?

SCHERER: We see on an average of over five thousand admissions in the Clinic each month. That means that the Monroe Clinic is bringing into Monroe approximately fifteen thousand people each month.

SCHMIDT: Fifteen thousand people each month, and most of them wouldn't come to Monroe except for the Clinic. Note that for its importance to a town containing less than eight thousand people. It means a good deal more than a place to have aches and pains diagnosed. It means, to put it bluntly, extra dollars, thousands of them, for restaurants, hotels, and retail stores. People come to a medical 00:43:00center because of the concentration of medical knowledge there. But not everyone has to go to a clinic in order to benefit from it, for medical knowledge is not a stagnant thing. It lives and grows and flows outward. During the past year, more than fifteen million people all over the United States and Canada have read or heard of some of the things learned at the Monroe Clinic. It all started like this.

SCHINDLER: The second thing to learn is to learn to like to work. In this world to get any place you've got to work. There've been a few that have devised some other methods, but they lead either to the penitentiary or to a political job!

SCHMIDT: That was a portion of a talk entitled "How to Live a Hundred Years Happily." An audience of several hundred persons originally heard this talk, but 00:44:00since then it has been broadcast by more than ten radio stations outside of Wisconsin, and printed in seven publications totaling more than fifteen million copies. The speaker was Dr. John Schindler of Monroe Clinic. The occasion: a Farm and Home Week session at Madison on the evening of February 3, 1949. His talk was broadcast that night over the state FM network and has been in demand ever since. The first to hear it wanted to read it and wanted to hear it again. With each succeeding broadcast and publication came more enthusiastic response. And so it spread. The remarkable popularity of this talk indicates two things: one, Dr. Schindler is a delightful speaker; and two, the public has a new awareness of, and a new interest in, the subject of the talk, psychosomatic illnesses. And Dr. Schindler based his talk on the things he learned at the Monroe Clinic. This is what he told us about the development of psychosomatic 00:45:00illness treatment at Monroe.

SCHINDLER: The Interest here began about 1940 when it was apparent that the usual ways of taking care of psychosomatic illness were very inadequate, and we began at that time instituting various new methods for treating this very important disease, and gradually it took the form of what we call the nerve clinic, which has been running here in the Monroe Clinic for the past eight or nine years, and it is in that clinic that we have developed the concepts that we're using here in the treatment of psychosomatic illness, and I might say that as far as we are concerned, these methods have completely revolutionized the care of this type of patient.

SCHMIDT: This is an example of the types of specialized knowledge you can find 00:46:00in the Monroe Clinic. These specialties are the ingredients of thorough diagnosis. The Clinic is equipped to find out what ails a person and to help him plan what to do about it. If the plan includes hospitalization, the St. Clare Hospital takes over. St. Clare is pleasant to visit whether you need treatment or information. During our visit we talked with Sister Blandine, medical supervisor and personnel director, and Dr. W. G. Bear, chief of staff. We learned from Dr. Bear one of the things a community might do when it needs a hospital.

BEAR: Our old hospital became inadequate. It was not a fireproof building. We couldn't add to it and we needed a hospital here in this community and we heard of the St. Agnes Society of Fond du Lac, and Dr. Nathan Bear and Dr. Earl Baumle went up to interview them. And the doctors persuaded them to come down and look 00:47:00over Monroe, which they did later on, and finally decided to build in Monroe.

SCHMIDT: And does that mean the Sisters of St. Agnes actually furnished the money to build this hospital?

SISTER BLANDINE: This hospital was financed by the Sisters of St. Agnes with the exception of the ground, the site. That was given by the doctors of Monroe. Otherwise, the hospital was financed entirely by the Sisters of St. Agnes.

SCHMIDT: The hospital originally built by Sister Blandine's order contained sixty-five beds, but the multitudes of patients brought to Green County by the ever-expanding clinic soon required more. The extra room is now being provided. When a construction project, now under way, is completed, St. Clare's will be able to handle more than twice as many patients as it does today. This interdependence between hospital and clinic has dominated both institutions. The 00:48:00clinic was started only because hospital facilities were available, and now the clinic, or rather the hospital, is doubling its size because of patients attracted by the clinic. Indispensable to each other, they are together of untold economic value to the community, of untold life-giving value to thousands of individuals. When you have been through a community like Green County, seen its buildings and streets, farms and highways, seen and talked with its people, you often do it all over again in your memory. Fragments of scenes and conversations are piled one on top of the other, with a subconscious logic to form a new experience. It might sound something like this.

[yodeling]

MARTY: There was hard times in Switzerland.

GROSENBACHER: As they say, they could hear the echo and they liked that you know.

SCHINDLER: These methods have completely revolutionized the care of this type of patient.

SICKINGER: And the fire was going wonderful.

MARTY: [laughter]

O'DELL: Pretty serious business, boy, because...

SCHERER: ... is bringing into Monroe approximately fifteen thousand people each month.

AUGSBERGER: Fasnachtschüechli.

MARTY: [laughter]

SCHMIDT: --at the Angle now, at lunch hour--

SCHINDLER: More milk per square mile than any other dairying area in the United States.

CRANDALL: September 9, 1950.

BURKHARDT: Limburger cheese won out.

MARTY: [laughter]

O'DELL: Pretty serious business, boy, because--

MARTY: [laughter]

SCHMIDT: It is from this reliving of an experience, this reliving tempered by time, that your evaluations should arise. From this perspective ask yourself some questions. Ask, for instance, what is the single most important factor in making Green County a good place in which to live? The answer--listen.

[sound of cash register]

SCHMIDT: That's a down-to-earth sound--down, that is, to a modern, business-like earth. That's the sound of a cash register.

[sound of cash register]

SCHMIDT: Take that sound and multiply it often enough to give Monroe a higher retail index than any other city of its size in the state of Wisconsin. Often enough to give Green County a net purchasing power of twenty-seven million dollars, and each family a net purchasing power of thirty-eight hundred dollars. 00:51:00Take the sound in that magnitude, and for a moment, at least, you can't hear anything else. Chiefly responsible for these statistics is the dairy industry, and the bulk of that is supplied by cheese. That leads to the next question. What would Green County be today if the Swiss had never settled there? For the answer, look outside of the vein of Swiss settlers which runs up through the center of the county, including Monroe, Monticello and New Glarus. Outside of this area you will find the Welsh, the Germans, Norwegians and the Pennsylvania Dutch, many of whom preceded the Glarners to Green County. The basis of their livelihood is the dairy industry, because the land on which they live is best suited to dairying. It is reasonable to believe they would have arrived at that conclusion without the influence of the Glarners. The Swiss influence, the Swiss knowhow in cheesemaking, enabled them to obtain leadership in a particular phase 00:52:00of dairying, and that leadership has brought greater prosperity. Hence, this conclusion: without the Swiss, Green County would still be a county of dairymen, but they would lack the extra margin of prosperity made possible by dominance in one particular phase of that industry--dominance in cheesemaking. All right. The final question now, the most important question. What does the future hold for Green County? The only safe answer to that one leaves you with another question. Look to Green County's main source of income, the dairy industry. Ninety-seven per cent of Green County's farm income is derived from dairying. And about ninety per cent of Green County's manufacturing concerns depend on the dairymen for their raw materials. The conclusion: A community so closely allied with dairying will follow the dairy industry's ups and downs. As long as the nation's dairy industry enjoys prosperity, Green County will be prosperous. 

[Swiss yodelers]

SCHMIDT: These questions and answers are merely suggested as a means of evaluating a community. It is a method that can be used on any community, but if Green County is your subject, if you are asking about the cheese industry or the Glarners, the Youth Cabin, or the clinic, the answer will be something that permits no indifference. You are either proud of it or you envy it.

ANNOUNCER: This has been the story of Green County, part 4 of a recorded series entitled "Wisconsin Communities." Our thanks to Dr. William Gnagi, and Mr. Harold Scherer for their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this program. Narration and production was by Carl Schmidt, and the script was written by Les Nelson. The series is brought to you every Saturday night at 00:54:00eight and every Sunday morning at ten. Listen again in two weeks for the story of West Bend. This is the Wisconsin College of the Air.