How did the term "HOG" start? In 1920, a team of farm boys used a hog as a mascot. After consistently winning races, they would mount the pig on their Harley and take a victory lap. In 1983 the company took advantage of the term by starting a Harley Owners Group (HOG). When they attempted to trademark "hog," the courts ruled the term had come to mean "any large motorcycle," not just a Harley-Davidson. However, in 2006 the company changed its ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange from HDI to HOG. A dissenting story is that in the 1960s the bikes were fat and slow, and so they picked up the disparaging name by people who didn''t like Harley-Davidson motorcycles. According to that story, the first Harley Owners Group co-opted "HOG" to deflect from the disdain of the day and shed a more favorable light on the motorcycles. How is the company viewed by the State of Wisconsin? Two times Harley-Davidson picked up special awards by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

In 1988 they were recognized as a "turnaround" company, and in 1994 they were declared a "worldwide leader" in manufacturing. Worldwide, Harley-Davidson sold more than 250,000 units in fiscal year 2016 with sales more than six billion dollars annually. How many people work for Harley-Davidson? According to Forbes Magazine , Harley Davidson ranks as the twenty-first best employer in the United States, giving jobs to more than six thousand employees. Salaries vary widely by position, but project managers earn more than $95,000 per year, and senior project engineers earn just over $94,000. What big breweries are located in Wisconsin? There are four breweries making more than 100,000 barrels (16 million liters) of product annually. The biggest of those four is MillerCoors in Milwaukee (more than seven million barrels, or 1.1 billion liters, in 2014), Minhas Craft Brewery in in Monroe, New Glarus Brewing in New Glarus, and the smallest, Stevens Point Brewery in Stevens Point, producing 115,000 barrels, or 18 billion liters. Was Milwaukee ever known as the Beer Capitol of the World? The city of Milwaukee did make that proclamation in 1860, when it exported more beer than any other community.

The city has always been a beer town, even before it incorporated. There was a tavern for every forty residents in the 1800s.By 1880 German immigration had ballooned to the point in which 27% of the population came from that region of the world. They brought beer yeast and the willingness to brew. Names of those brewers include Joseph Schlitz (1831-1875), Frederick Pabst (1836-1904), and Valentin Blatz (1826-1894). The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed nearly half of the breweries in Chicago, and Milwaukee producers saw an opportunity. Schlitz shipped free beer to Chicago, thereby becoming known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous." Other brewers followed that lead.

In the years after the fire, more than half of beer production in Milwaukee was sent out of the city. Did war have an impact on beer production in Milwaukee? In the years following the Great Chicago Fire, brewers took advantage of their increased production to widen distribution. Pabst tied a blue ribbon to every bottle to make their product more enticing. Their output climbed to a million barrels in 1895. Schlitz combated the Pabst blue ribbon strategy by sending Commodore George Dewey (1837-1917) 3,600 bottles (1,260 liters) of beer in 1898 to congratulate him on his capture of Manila during the Spanish American War. Dewey ordered a trainload of Schlitz, and in all, 700,000 barrels (111 million liters) of beer from Milwaukee made it to the Philippines. What caused the decline in Schlitz beer? In order to meet increasing demand, Schlitz tried a new brewing method in 1967 with a shorter fermenting process. Production time dropped enough to increase output by 25%, but word spread about a change in the recipe.

Customers didn''t want beer not aged long enough and sales sagged. Less than a decade later, the brewery produced beer with a slight haze, and ten million bottles (3.5 million liters) had to be dumped. In 1981 a strike closed down the Milwaukee plant. Legal trouble over sketchy ad campaigns contributed to decreasing demand. Schlitz became known to residents as "the beer that made Milwaukee furious." In 1982 Stroh Brewing purchased Schlitz.