"peddlers of tobacco." The small amount received from 

 these itinerant merchants, so welcome to farm families 

 in outlying districts, did not necessarily mean that ped- 

 dlers were few in number or that they sold comparatively 

 little tobacco. It is far more probable that these rugged 

 individualists on the retail level had developed their own 

 methods of making only token payments to revenue 

 ofiBcers. 



The record of tobacco in Wisconsin, briefly related in 

 the foregoing pages, indicates how that agricultural com- 

 modity helped in the building of a state, as it had in many 

 other sections of America. The labor and products of 

 Wisconsin's tobacco farmers developed towns, created 

 new business enterprises and otherwise aided the econ- 

 omy. For more than a century fields of tobacco have 

 dotted Wisconsin's landscape. For the better part of the 

 past century the quality of Wisconsin tobacco has main- 

 tained ready outlets among manufacturers of tobacco 

 products in the United States. 



Milwaukee River at Milwaukee, 1872 



13 



