194 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 
original plan of the United States engineers was to build a pier 
at the mouth of the river, but. this conflicted with the views of 
the citizens and thus interfered with harmonious co-operation 
on their part. The first government appropriations: were ex¬ 
pended, according to its plans, at the mouth of the river while 
the citv, on the other hand, in April 1844 voted a loan of $15,- 
000 with which to dig a channel known as “the straight cut,” 
thus avoiding the lower windings of the river. Private subscrip¬ 
tions for the same object were also received but the project was 
not successfully begun until 1852. By that time the govern¬ 
ment had been convinced that the scheme: of the citizens was the 
better and so abandoned its own work at the mouth of the river, 
already proved worthless, and appropriated $15,000 to aid the 
city’s plans. Until the latter was completed private piers were 
the sole means of landing except for those little crafts that could 
ascend the river at the old mouth. Since the government aid 
was intermittent the city decided to complete the work itself and 
having secured in the charter of 1846 power to raise harbor 
taxes, whenever the citizens so voted, in all some $100,000 was 
authorized. The cost of the work done in the succeeding years 
was greater than this amount and the contractors were obliged 
to bring suit for the balance. Litigation was prolonged for a 
decade, coming before the Supreme Court of the state several 
times, under the title Ilasbrouck vs. The City of Milwaukee 
and was finally adjudicated in favor of the contractor in 1866. 
Thus, the cost of the improvement was almost double what it 
would have been otherwise, the total sum spent by the city for 
the harbor being in the neighborhood of half a million dollars, 
up to 1870. Efforts were repeatedly made to secure reimburse¬ 
ment from the: government for this sum but all failed of ac¬ 
complishment. The government resumed the work in earnest 
after the Civil War and in 1881 began the construction of the 
outer harbor of refuge, costing a million in itself. The com¬ 
mercial position of the Cream City is so largely due to its harbor 
however that the expenditures, on the whole, enormous as they 
have been, cannot be considered as excessive. 
