New York in the early forties to sell the family wine. ³ The
family's second American venture began with the journey of
Jacob, Jr., the oldest son, and Charles, the second son, to Mil-
waukee in 1842. There they set up a vinegar factory. ⁴ This ven-
ture prospered so well that in less than two years Charles re-
turned to Mettenheim to persuade his father and two other
brothers to move the whole family business to the United States.

There must have been long and serious arguments around
the family table in the Best house in Mettenheim while a boy
in his twenties tried to persuade his fifty-eight-year-old father,
a well-established small-town businessman, to sell out and try
a fresh start in an unknown city nearly five thousand miles
away. But all forces were working in Charles's favor. His
father's trade was largely among the farmers around Metten-
heim, and, in 1844, these farmers were badly off with little pros-
pect of improvement. The agricultural depression in Rhineland
Germany was not simply a matter of a turn of the business
cycle. Agricultural prices had been moving downward ever
since the Napoleonic Wars, and the subsequent division of the
old communal holdings into small individual farms had worked
to the disadvantage of the peasants. If anything, the father's
market for beer would get worse and worse. There seemed
every reason to sell out; and an upswing of the business cycle in
1843 probably gave Jacob, Sr., a chance to unload his factory at
a moderately good price.

While conditions in Germany thus gave many incentives for
moving, conditions in the United States practically demanded
that if any move were made it should be to the New World.
Even there Wisconsin offered unusual attractions, and none
more inviting than in the Milwaukee region. Cheap farm land
was attracting thousands of German and American settlers to

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