Agricultural Congruence, the Fertile Prairies

My father was born in 1918, an era markedly different from the one in which we now live. He was born in the family farm house southeast of Manly, Iowa near a small town established about 40 years prior to his birth. His father Rudy, purchased the land from his father (My dad's grandfather) Martin. Martin was born in 1850 in Bohemia, and his paternal line as far back as can be traced, to mid 1500's, were peasant-serf farmers. This post (and a later post) is about the congruity of the Hovel family in agriculture to the socioeconomic and cultural trends at the time. This post will concentrate on the congruity of agriculture regarding my grandfather, Rudy Hovel and his father Martin Hovel who farmed the fertile prairies of Iowa and southern Wisconsin.

Rudy, and Ida with son Roy 

These posts, instead of going from past to more recent will go from more recent to past. One aspect of congruence is the adoption of new agricultural techniques. When my grandfather prepared to move from the farm he purchased from his father, Martin in Manly, IA, to Sun Prairie, WI  he held an auction. This  December 1929 auction included much farm equipment, animals and some household items. He took some items with him, as a news report indicates that Rudy rode on the train to Sun Prairie with his load of items. He had a diversity of milking cows, including Red Milking Shorthorns, Roan Northern, and black milk cows. It was a diverse group of cows. My brother Mike, who was a dairy farmer himself made this comment via email when I inquired of the diverse animal group: 

The herd of milking cows is quite diverse and I wouldn't doubt that Rudy was crossbreeding animals much like some farms are today to get more vigor as  opposed to strictly purebreds witch would have a "limited gene pool".. would suspect he had good test weights with such a mix of cows.. no small feat to feed that number of cattle , sheep and pigs plus the 50 hens !! (Author note: beyond milk cows he had many head of beef cattle.)

Auction notice, Dec 5, 1912 Manly Signal

Rudy was farming in an era of significant technological innovation, particularly in terms of equipment, and power. His auction included varied equipment, but it is difficult for me to tell which was horse vs tractor pulled, if it mattered. I have written before about changes in farming during that crucial era. At a broad scale, the mechanized and technological changes in agriculture can best be represented by persons employed in agriculture in the United States as shown in the following table: 

Rudy purchased the home farm of about 80 acres and an additional 42 acres from his father in December 1912 for $8,400. Rudy grew the operation as evidenced between the Iowa 1915 census to what is recorded for his 1929 auction sale. In 1915 he reported as having 11 milk cows, an additional eight calves less than one year old, and five steer of varied ages. But, he also had 160 fowl and four pigs. In total his 1929 auction included over 64 large animals, including 54 head of cattle, as well as 50 chickens. Showing the older method of farming, in 1915 Rudy had five horses and one colt. Technology likely helped him grow and harvest the feed for his expanding livestock based farm. Farm advancement was taking hold and production was increasing during this era. 

Lower part of auction notice

As the Gilded age took hold after 1865, and the end of the Civil War, and within a few years the nation began its rapid industrialization, and this can be seen in the continued reduction in persons employed in agriculture. In its place, the specialization of labor started to take hold as accounts, teachers, lawyers, and other managerial and professional classes advanced the nation. The change to an increasing specialized economy also required education. The below graph shows years percent of high school graduates, percent who attended college and the percent illiterate:

My grandfather, born in 1887, was in high school through 10 grade. Realizing the importance of education, he and his wife, Ida, sent their two children to private boarding high schools in Prairie du Chien. My dad was born in September 1918 and graduated from high school in spring 1935. He then graduated from Marquette University in 1939 and followed that with Law School at the University of Wisconsin matriculating in 194. A couple months later he began his service in WWII.

Roy with his parents, graduation
Likely Campion High School 

My mom and dad had nine children that lived into adulthood, with Mike being the farmer, one a builder, and the others involved in a variety of professions: teachers, lawyer, dentist, accountant, manager/administrator. The Hovel family was part of the congruence with larger societal trends of movement to specialization in occupations. It mirrors the outcomes of the national socio-economic culture.

While the industrial revolution began in the late 18th century in the United States, certain inventions, think if the steel plow in 1837, were crucial to breaking the prairie sod of the Midwest, it took time and of course money for farms to afford such equipment. 

My great grandfather, Martin and his wife Amelia purchased his first 80 acres of land southeast of Manly, IA from a man named Joseph Brohm who was an absentee owner. The purchase of the 80 acres cost Martin and Amelia $970.00 with the purchase signed on Dec 21, 1877, or eighty years to the date prior to the birth of my twin brother. The deed was recorded the following month. News accounts seem to indicate that Martin broke the sod and established his farm. It is said he hauled rock for the house foundation, and Amelia helped lay the rock. One account, from 1976, indicates they moved to a farm 1.5 miles southeast of Manly in the fall of 1877. I suppose it is possible he was renting the land until the purchase was finalized. This would be the home in which both my grandpa and my dad would be born. Martin likely had a steel plow. It would take time to break the prairie sod. His purchase in late 1877 left two years to break the sod and the 1880 US Agriculture census he reported having tilled 45 acres in 1879 (reported 1880). Martin had only one milk cow, with six pigs, and 25 barnyard poultry from which he produced 60 dozen eggs. His main crops were Indian corn, oats and wheat, although her harvested 30 bushels of Irish potatoes from 1/8th of an acre. Having learned to use oxen in the old country, he had one ox and two horses.

Martin Hovel Family, c1893
Rudy is to left

In the US census, Martin and Amelia are reported as literate. Martin was born in Bohemia, but Amelia was born to immigrant parents in the town of Milford, Jefferson Co. The only item I have of a great grandfather is a book in German owned by Martin in the extraordinarily difficult to read Kurrent script. The book is dated 1890, so it was acquired while he was in the US. I am sure he spoke English, but this shows German may well have been his language of choice. In a dissonance to the common culture, Martin and Amelia, as well as their children were Roman Catholic. While Bohemians did not have the same level of animus expressed to them as the Irish, they still likely felt some discrimination.

 A brother recalls Rudy, and his brother Ed discussing the KKK activity that occurred in Iowa, popularized in the Netflix  show Damnation. The advance of the second KKK in Iowa may have been one reason why Rudy migrated to Sun Prairie. He and Ida were very devote, with their first date to Vespers. KKK members were known to have taken control of the Manly school board. Today as then, Manly continues to be the only community in Worth County with a Catholic Church, which shows the domination of Protestants. The KKK certainly caused turbulence in the nation, and it may have done so for my grandparents. I also tend to think issues and actions related to KKK action were underreported given the number of middle class merchants, news, and in some places police and sheriffs were involved with the KKK. 

Turbulence in the socio-economic portion of society was seen in more than just the KKK. The rapid industrialization of the nation (which began in 1870) was the lead cause of a rural to urban migration as specialization took hold in the realm of business and government. It was followed by the Great War which would yield to the farm depression of the early 1920's, and later the better known Great Depression would arrive. Internationally, starting in 1939, the world would be amazed at the speed of the German blitzkrieg, and with concern over Germany's desire for domination. Grandpa Rudy helped organize a peace rally held at St Joseph's Church in East Bristol in Sept 1939. United States entry into World War II would forever change the map of the world. For all the political upheaval, there was also tension caused by greater mechanization in farming and life in general. 

Martin and Amelia

Historian John L. Shover, in his work First Majority-Last Minority, an agricultural history over time in the United States, comments that farms of this era, particularly in the Midwest, were "diversified units producing a little bit of most everything to meet the family's subsistence requirements, with a little surplus left over for cash marketing." Given the US Census Agricultural schedules reviewed in 1870 and 1880, the Iowa 1915 census and the 1929 auction items, Rudy followed a the standard diversification of what is today a small farm.  A practice today that is highly thought of and which form pleasant nostalgic stories if not memories emanate. I believe, the diversification was necessary, as large profits were not the norm. Diversification would not be putting all your eggs in one basket, and would be a hedge against disease or weather. In fact if one looks at the writings of Agricultural Economist, Curtis Stadtfeld, who was a generation younger than my father, but wrote about his parents livelihood on the Michigan farm on which he was raised, one gets a different take of the melancholic view often described today for that era of farming. Just one example of Stadtfield, who grew up on a farm in the Midwest can suffice:

In fact, the barn was never painted at all. The good potato crop never came. It always rained too little to make good beans, or too much to harvest them. We never had so many heifer calves that the herd grew large and made us wealthy. We were always just getting by. And then came the war [reference to WWII], and so many things were pulled apart that were never put back together again. The fabric of that life tore, and we looked back from the other side of the rent and wondered how it ever worked in the first place how it ever held together.

This shows that sustenance of the family came first, and hence diversification was necessary to provide the meat, dairy, eggs, and other products common to living. A garden would have also raised vegetables with food preserved through canning, or in root cellars. Specialization would have meant dependence on one or two crops or animals, and with no diversity a failure in one could have been catastrophic to family well being. The move to dairy in Wisconsin occurred, in part, due the cinch bug having become problematic for the wheat crop. I surmise that Rudy, who was a very hard worker, was generally successful, and that his farm was not in the dire situation noted by Shover. Rudy continued to own his Iowa farm for twelve years after moving to Wisconsin, selling it in 1942. He purchased his Sun Prairie farm on March 4, 1929, seven months the Great Depression would occur. Yet, he did not move to teh farm until January of 1930. Rudy's skill, tenacity and perseverance, along with diversification likely helped him and his family survive through such difficult times. 

Rudy Hovel Farm, near Manly, IA 1913
42 acres north of road and original 80 acres south of road

Life on the farm was never easy. Tilling at a time of pre-tractor would have been not only time consuming, but hard work behind a horse drawn plow. Of all the work, tilling of the land for corn and other related row crops was, as reported by Shover, the most difficult chore. Shover referred to the work as: "a stern regime of daily tasks and unyielding seasonal requirements" which determined the pace of activity.

Rudy also benefitted from earnings of stock in then growing companies. His investments included Standard Oil, Maytag, Montgomery Ward and Sears, among others. He benefitted by the industrialization of the nation in both farming and with stock, likely on the belief he could be left behind.

Rudy's Sun Prairie, WI Farm, 1937 air photo

The Hovel family mirrored the economic changes of the time. It moved as advancements were made in farming, whether equipment or breeding. We can see then, that from 1880 to 1915 and then to 1929 there was a great increase in what was able to accomplish in growth of livestock and likely income on the Hovel farm fist owned by Martin and then taken over by Rudy. Rudy undertook an additional purchase of land from his father near the home farm, first joint with his brother in 1917 whom he later bought out in 1922. Martin and Amelia would retire from farming and finish out their years at a house in Manly, IA, purchased from a family friend. The house would stay in the family for decades. After Amelia's wake, the candles were still burning when some temporary tenants moved in until later occupied by a member of the Joseph Hovell (Martin's brother, wo added an additional L) family.

My dad was in the professional class, breaking my direct line with farming, although my brother Mike carried on agriculture until his retirement from dairy farming. The family was congruent with the national activity. 

The next post will explore how the Hovel family congruence in immigration, followed by a third post about duties and obligations imposed and altered during their stay in the old world. Bohemia. It is a chapter of extreme toil of their work as peasants and serfs, with little advancement in techniques or methods of agriculture during most all of that time frame. The world is much different now than when my father was born 107 years ago, and in the world in which he grew up and served his country in WWII. The Hovel family, now seeing some of my dad's great grandchildren enter the workforce, has continued to follow the waves of history as we move into the second quarter of the 21st century.

Of Land and Sponges

Funny how we can be so similar to the past. I have spoken a few times at Village meetings regarding the water and sewer rate increases the village saw, and will once again see, with the coming construction of  new well #5. Having watched the first episode of "The American Revolution" I find myself not as enamored with the founding fathers as I once was. Two issues, beyond the slavery issue of many, made me question their motives. First, is the idea that the war was not so much about the principles of freedom and liberty as about land, which jogged my memory of a book I read a few years ago. Second, the episode made me wonder if the colonists did not like some of the actions imposed on them because they were sponges. In this sense, they relate to my comments on McFarland Utility bill increases. This post ties both the land speculation and then about whether the colonies sponged off the home nation as the surrounding towns sponge off McFarland.

Land

One historian quoted in the episode commented that the Revolutionary War was essentially about land rather than the principles of liberty and freedom, or really taxation without representation. He noted that many of the founding father's were large land speculators including George Washington, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Land speculation was in  jeopardy after the French and Indian War because the Brits banned colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. This was not due to keeping the Native Americans in their home territory, but rather over the cost to maintain peace in the dispersed settlements due to the likelihood of further conflict with Native Americans. The Crown simply recognized it was too costly to provide safety to such dispersed frontiersmen. Certain colonial leaders did not like not being able to obtain, speculate and profit off the sale of land west of the mountains. This jogged my memory of a book I read which intimated this was one of the causes of the Revolutionary War. Follow the money is a phrase today, but it seems it was also applicable more than 250 years ago.

Thomas Jefferson, Wikipedia

Jefferson was a large speculator throughout his life, which was contrary to many of his public speeches in which he praised small farmers and the agrarian way of life. Evidence comes from the book Mr Jefferson's Lost Cause, authored by Roger Kennedy who noted that Jefferson and his neighbors were large land owners. He went on to say that Jefferson received 2,650 acres from his mother in 1757, and by 1782 his farm had grown to 4,125 acres, with over 200 slaves. One neighbor farmed 7,500 acres and another 9,700. Well, lets be real, they did not farm themselves as they were the Gentlemen Planters who employed many slaves to do the dirty work. Further, Kennedy reported that Jefferson's kinfolk in another Virginia county, the Cole's, "assembled 15,000 acres into one vast land imperium." However, the kicker is that Kennedy reports that "All of them, Jefferson included, planted in the east and speculated in the west." Jefferson's father was also a land speculator with involvement in the Greenbrier Company, a satellite of the Loyal Company, and Jefferson kept in contact and did business with one of his father's partners (see p 64). On the following page Kennedy goes on to say that "Speculation in Western land led many planters into rebellion against a British government that had twice sought to cut them off from the West." As noted, the show jogged my memory of this aspect. Was the cry "Give Me liberty or give me death", really a euphemism for "Give me land and money?"

Another proximate cause to the Revolution was the Quebec Acts, which instituted certain civil liberties in French and Catholic Quebec, in order to assimilate the province into the British Empire. Many of the Colonial leaders, the documentary reports, were against the Quebec Act, possibly due to dealing with the French Catholics. There was but one Catholic who signed the Declaration of Independence. A student of history, or the National Treasure movie would note that man as being Charles Carrol. This of course, did not mean that the same persons would be against French assistance in the war, as  it played to the dictum "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." The French assistance of the US Revolutionary War was a partial cause, due to  incurred debt, for the French Revolution and the resulting Reign of Terror.

Sponges

While a good many of the acts passed by British Parliament to raise money due to debt incurred with the French and Indian War were intolerable, some may have been appropriate to fund a war that retained the colonies under British rule, which they preferred, which allowed the Anglophiles, slaves and all, to flourish. But, the colonies would have none of that. The Colonial government had established Safe Committees to watchdog against imports or exports to Britain. The PBS documentary noted that such committees and their actions were more intolerable and egregious than any act undertaken by parliament and imposed on the colonies. For the same group to desire liberty, and then to work against it, shows how the ends justified the means and principles could be easily set aside. The documentary did not note if any of the colonial leaders had heart burn over the hypocrisy. The colonies, it seems desired services, but did not wish to pay for them. In that sense they were sponging off others, in their case Britain. They not only wanted to land speculate west of the mountains, but they wanted the British to safeguard them and move the Native Americans out. They did not wish the Stamp Act to pay for colonial judges. Of the British colonies in the Americas, the documentary states that the Caribbean was really the economic power house, likely with its crops of sugar and rum produced slaves. Of the 13 colonies in North America, Virginia was the economic engine with its productivity. At this time, all of the colonies had some slaves, although southern states had much higher populations. At this time, Virginia's population was 40% slaves. Economics always matter.

1770 Slaves in American Colonies,
actual and percent of population
Wikipedia

This gets us to McFarland. I have spoken out a few times, to deaf ears, about how we village residents for property tax and ratepayers are subsidizing the towns in the area. Let me use two examples. First, early this year the village moved the Fire Protection Charge (FPC) from the village tax base to the utility district (water, and sewer collection). This near $500,000 shift caused rates to increase rather dramatically. (The tax shift was not used to lower property taxes but to put to fund new expenses.) The FPC essentially is a payment to the utility for the necessity of having to oversize facilities for fire protection. For example, hydrants, and storage (think water towers) fall partly into this. We ratepayers are now paying this charge. The towns are not in the utility and hence are not ratepayers. They benefit from this because hydrants and storage are used to fight fires in the rural area, and since fires double every 30-60 seconds, and it takes longer to get to a rural fire, more water is needed. And the water, due to no fire hydrants, has to come by tanker. More personnel and equipment is required. Yet, the only charge the towns served by McFarland pay is a bulk water rate. Second, they do not pay for upcharge in equipment, much less help share the capital, finance, and operating costs for the fire station. They did not even pay for the high capacity pump at the fire station to fill a tanker truck. Our utility rates will take another big jump for a $4.2 million well #5, and I am sure even though the towns will benefit by a new high capacity well, they will not pay. Heck, The water impact fee in the village is based on only a $1 million project and when depreciation is taken into account (by PSC rules), the payments are rather minuscule. One can see that largess is not just to towns but to new construction. (Some policy makers in the village wish to get rid of impact fees altogether, but their share of a new $500,000 home is rather minor, and I doubt they will sell for less, just make more profit for the developer.) Developers today are, in a way, similar to the land speculators among our founding fathers.

Simeon Goff, Rosters of Revolutionary War Service, Family Search

Fire is only one aspect, most towns are served by the Dane County Sheriff whose budget is spread over the whole county, and the towns pay no more or less (unless the contract for additional protection), even though municipalities have their own police forces. Or, let us take a senior center, funded fully by the village, but used by the sponges in the rural area. They get lower taxes since they do not have to fund such services, and we the McFarland tax payer pay for their share. In the 250 years since the battle of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) just as the colonists were sponges, so too are many towns in Dane County. They sponge off the services and goodwill of the neighboring municipality. Small municipalities may sponge off Madison, using certain Madison services, but not paying property taxes for such service. One example, is the Overture center, in which the city of Madison is contributing over $2 million in 2025, but yet, I am not aware that a city of Madison resident gets a reduced ticket price. There are many other ways urban areas subsidize rural areas such as electricity and internet. It is much cheaper to lay such lines in an urban area, since there is a lineal cost per foot, but we subsize the long line construction in the rural area. I pay the same price as for internet as a rural home that required perhaps a couple thousand more feet of fiber than I required.

Wife's 4th Great Grandfather, in Muster Roll
Family search

The Nine Springs Sewer Treatment Plant is required by state law to allow sewer trucks (Honey Wagons) to dump at the plant, but only are allowed to charge actual cost. Well, even though I have been pressing for 33 years, they have yet to charge the millions of dollars spent in the headworks facility to handle the truck discharge of the waste they haul. They should pay the capital and debt cost for such a facility and not have it continued to be born by the MMSD ratepayers.

McFarland Public Safety Building 2025, Bray Architects

Many like to be a sponge and being so was not unique. Simeon Goff, my wife's fourth great grandfather, a patriot, whose first tour of duty in the Revolutionary War started nine days after Lexington and Concord was the opposite of Thomas Jefferson. A small Massachusetts farmer, he probably was part of the movement that spread over Massachusetts for the ideals of liberty and freedom, and likely knew nothing about the land speculators among the founding fathers at the Continental Congress. We see sponges today, particularly by rural landowners in Dane County who sponge off the largess of a nearby municipality. As I was told in answer to my query about getting the towns to pay their fair share for capital and operating expenses: "But, that is the way it has always been done." Well, that is not a good answer. The problem with the nation as a whole is most everybody wants services, but they do not wish to pay for them. 

Some say to study history because it repeats itself, perhaps not exactly, but in tone. Looking at the land speculation aspect, allows one to question the overall movement toward the war that started in April 1775. Were the ideals and principles of "Live Free or Die", Liberty, or Freedom, secondary to land speculation? Then we get to the colonial sponges and can compare them to the town sponges who receive service from McFarland. The inchoate nation 250 years past was perhaps in a land of sponges, but it soon was on its way to becoming an economic powerhouse. The founding fathers, as flawed as they may have been with mixed messaging of land and sponges, still had some great ideas. 

Sources: 2025 "The American Revolution: In Order to be Free," Episode 1 of 6,  Ken Burns et al, PBS 

              2003 Kennedy, Roger G, Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land Farmers, Slavery and the Louisiana Purchase, Oxford University Press, NY NY.

Don't Get Hurt

It was one of the last nice days before the cold was to set in, so I was outside Wednesday morning doing some various chores in the yard, in preparation for the upcoming cold weather. The brown leaves are hanging on the Hickory trees, and if like other years they will slowly fall off after the yard is all cleaned up well into the winter.  One Locust and a Maple still had leaves, with the Maple having just changed to a vibrant yellow a few days earlier. I was not doing anything major in the yard, just those small chores that are easy to overlook. The wife was going to go grocery shopping, and before departing she says to me: "Don't get hurt."  

Don't Get Hurt? I don't know why that tends to come up, like she must think I am accident prone. I am not sure what she expected me to do, get up on the roof and fall off? Come to think of it, that may not be the best example. Why? Because I had been known for going up on the roof while she has been away from the house. Generally, to clean gutters, or branches off the roof from storms. For years she has told me to not go on the roof when she is not home. I still think, now many years ago, a former neighbor tattled on me. Now we have gutter guards so my forays to the roof are lessened. It has been years since I have been on the roof of the two story part, as even I know that it is not safe to put a ladder on the peak and balance it while climbing to the upper roof from the lower, since I don't have long extension ladder. 

I guess there are ways I could get hurt in the yard, perhaps trying to haul to much. Even though I have a compost area (two actually) I sometimes take garden waste to the drop off site, and haul it down to the driveway by hand. She is often concerned that it becomes too heavy. The main way to get hurt would be falling down the hill I have to carry, or pull it down. I also haul brush down from our storage pile by the large compost area, to the street or sometimes to the drop off site.

I did not plan on biking that day, since it was a swim day, although I biked to swim. Speaking of biking, I got an earful, actually much more, from the wife after she read my blog post of 22 Oct titled Just Plain Stupid since I did not go into the fact that bike accidents area major cause of injury to seasoned citizens. I responded that I well knew that additional information could have gone in the post, but as the writer I made conscious choice to not place it in the post. It made me wonder if she used that tone of voice with her patients when they may have gotten out of line. I could see that voice being used in a classroom. 

Maple Tree Leaves blown over the backyard

I seem to get injured more doing something plain, like some simple exercises I have been doing for months, and then all of a sudden a tear sound is heard and felt in my foot, as happened Sunday evening. 

Her other go to phrase, particularly when I am going to bike, is "Be careful." Sometimes she says it and sometimes not. The thing is, it is not like a person looks to get hurt, it just happens. Elton Jenkins of the Packers broke is ankle Monday night, when a player on his team ran into a pile and his ankle got bent in a weird sort of way. Or, me pulling whatever I did in my foot. This week, we will need to clean up the leaves blown off the maple and the locust tree in the backyard. That maple tree color did not last long with the cold and snow that arrived Saturday night. Anyway, she can be happy because that Wednesday, I took her advice to heart and did not get hurt.

Daylight

As we all know, daylight savings time ended this past weekend. Clocks were turned back one hour on Saturday night, or if you are a night owl Sunday morning, as the official change took effect in the wee hours of Sunday morning. At Saturday evening mass, the priest paid for people who had to work the overnight shift, with an extra hour of work, to which my wife, a former nurse, shook her head in agreement. We will stay in standard time until March 8, 2026, or four months. There are calls from varied people, over the past few years, to end standard time and to have daylight savings time all year long. It is easy to look at your own situation and figure out what the effect would be, and perhaps many large population areas, such as the east coast, but the effect is different over the whole country.

The idea in changing to our current dates occurred through passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was intended to save energy, but later daylight had people moving around more in the evening, which may save electricity, but used more gasoline. The prior dates of last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October was established in 1966. Health care professionals seem to say that the change in time affects our body clock, which I am not going to disagree with, and can lead to varied health issues such as cardiac arrest. 

Daylight hours for a place are related to its geographic relationship. For example, northern regions have more daylight hours for the summer than in the winter. The "24 hours" of daylight in the Nordic countries and Alaska are famous, but less talked about is the long winter night. Many years ago we camped at Pattison State Park, south of Superior, near the Fourth of July Holiday. Fireworks were that weekend night in Superior, and they started at 10:00 pm, which compared to a start of fireworks in the Madison area at 9:15 pm. Daylight savings time provides long summer nights, and makes sunrise more reasonable to the typical American. Those are the reasons Daylight savings time was instituted. Over the years, the time of start and end has changed.

People have changed as modernity has advanced. Most Americans, with the specialization of labor wake up between 6:00 and 6:30 am, but agrarian societies often work starting at sunrise. The industrial-professional economy has office hours often going to 5 pm. When working in Monona, I left for work before 7:30 am, and got home about 5:30 pm, hence except for weekends. My morning began as the sun had just risen, and would set well before I got home. I seldom would be able to peruse the yard in daylight hours for part of the winter. 

Our timing of when daylight arrives is also affected by our relation to the time zone in which we are located. Eastern Wisconsin is near the eastern edge of the Central zone, while Michigan and Indiana are near the western edge of the Eastern time zone. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the sun rise in the western part of a time zone is later than in areas due east. Hence, this effect of longitude and latitude interplay to affect sun rise. Much of the UP of Michigan is in the Eastern time zone, including its most northern and western part--Isle Royale. Can you imagine a heavy cloud day and how dark it would feel in Houghton at almost 10:00 am in the morning if daylight savings time lasted all year?  You may wonder when the day will brighten. 

The following map indicates, to the half hour, when the latest the sun would rise if the nation went to all year Daylight savings time.

The table below has  latest sun rise for McFarland, WI, where I live, Conover, WI, where a brother lives, and Minneapolis, MN were a son lives. I also added Houghton, MI to show the variation. 

There seem to always be unintended consequences to varied actions. For example, take the reduction in standard time in 2005, in which electric energy reduction was offset by people using their cars more and gas consumption increased. More daylight meant that people felt more comfortable moving around and going places in the evening. Hence, I wonder what the unintended consequences of using DST all year would mean, particularly in places with sunrise showing up in midmorning? People tend to think of the locale they are in, and disregard other locations and how a time change may effect them. For some reason, people do not wish to go with standard time all year, which was in effect for all but a blip of history.