Wisconsin 101

Canine Distemper and the Fromm Vaccine

One of the most formidable problems that fur farmers faced in in the early twentieth century were the epidemic diseases that would strike their herds each year. Many fur farmers had come to see losses to distemper and other diseases as a…

The 1911 Workman’s Compensation Act and the Birth of an Industry

Wisconsin passed the nation’s first constitutionally upheld worker’s compensation law in 1911. It is one of the great successes of Progressive-era social legislation and a triumph of the Wisconsin Idea.1Previously, American workers toiling in industrialized workplaces had often faced the threat of…

OBJECT HISTORY: Employers Mutual Audiometer

This Maico Audiometer was one of many devices used by health and safety consultants of the Employers Mutual Liability Insurance Company of Wisconsin throughout the mid-to-late 1960s. Employers Mutual was the very first workers compensation insurance company in the United States. The company was founded in Wausau, Wisconsin, in 1911 shortly after the nation’s first workers compensation law was…