Minutes of the Lakeport Common Council, March 1891
1Lakeport grew up around a harbor on one of the Great Lakes, where lake ships, rail lines and mills brought jobs. The census office has sent the 1890 counts for each of Lakeport's four wards. The city has money for one new public school with twelve classrooms. The clerk reminded the council that the census counts every person every ten years and records where each was born. Across the nation in 1890, about one in three Americans lived in a town or city of 2,500 or more people, up from about one in four in 1870.
2Alderman Frieda Kowalczyk of the Northside spoke first. "The Northside more than tripled in ten years. When the rolling mill opened in 1884 and the railroads built their yards beside it, families came from Poland, Germany and Sweden, and from farms all over this state. Our only school has sixty children in some classrooms. Some mill children leave school at twelve to work. Mill families walk to work, and they cannot pay streetcar fares to send their children across town."
3Alderman Charles Whitfield of the Hill Ward answered. "Look at which ward grew fastest. Since the electric streetcar line opened in 1888, clerks, teachers and skilled workers have bought new houses on the hill and ride downtown to work. Land up there is still cheap, and a school there would have room for a playground. On the Northside, every lot is taken by houses, and the smoke and noise of the mill hang over everything. Build where the city is heading."
4Kowalczyk rose again. "Of course the hill grew fast. It started with only three thousand people. Count the children, not the percent. In ten years the Northside added more people than the whole Hill Ward holds today."
5Alderman Thomas Reilly of the Market Ward added a third point. "My ward is the only one that lost people. Stores and offices have replaced many houses downtown, and the Market Street School now has empty classrooms. Whatever you decide, remember those rooms."
6After an hour of debate, the mayor put off the vote until the next meeting so that each alderman could study the numbers. Several people in the gallery, some speaking German or Polish, asked that notices of the next meeting be printed in their languages as well as in English.