The Scandinavian Contingent

“WHAT a glorious new Scandinavia might not Minnesota become! Here would the Swede find again his clear romantic lakes, the plains of Scania rich in corn, and the valleys of Norrland ; here would the Norwegian find his rapid-flowing rivers, his lofty mountains, for I include the Rocky Mountains and Oregon in the new kingdom ; and both nations their hunting-fields and their fisheries. The Danes might here pasture their flocks and herds, and lay out their farms on richer and less misty coasts than those of Denmark. . . . The climate, the situation, the character of the scenery, agrees with our people better than that of any other of the American States.

So wrote Frederika Bremer from St. Paul in the autumn of 1850, when there were barely a score of Scandinavians in all the vast region she called Minnesota. Forty-five years have brought a marvelous fulfillment of these prophetic words, and to-day, of the 11,500,000 direct living descendants of the Vikings, 2,500,000, more than one fifth, reside in the United States, — born of Scandinavian parents, either in Europe or in America. In the sixty years since the movement really began, about 1,500,000 of these northern peoples have left their peninsular homes and built again in the New World. Few provinces of Denmark, Sweden, or Norway contain so many Scandinavians as the 375,000 who make up one fourth of the population of Minnesota. Wisconsin and Illinois have each 200,000. Iowa, Nebraska, and the two Dakotas have the larger part of the remainder, Twenty-five thousand or more are in Kansas, in each of the far Western States of California, Washington, and Utah, and even in the east coast States of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. In the last three States, however, they live for the most part in the great cities and manufacturing towns.

As I have gone about in the new Scandinavia and in the old Scandinavia, noting the same points of striking similarity which Miss Bremer described, and differences equally marked, I have ceased to wonder at the coming of the mighty host that has settled so quietly among us. The surprise is rather that so many have been content not to come. That the advantages in life for the vast majority of those who have emigrated are very real and positive is demonstrated by the exceedingly small percentage who return to the homeland for permanent residence. Some of these backsliders from faith in the great West have repented, and emigrated a second time. A physician, graduated at the University of Christiania, had gained a small fortune in a large Wisconsin town, and returned to Christiania with his family and belongings by the same steamer in which I went. He had served his term in exile, and was going back where a man could really live. In two years he was again in the Northwest, to stay.

It is a suggestive fact that so large a proportion of the Scandinavians are settled in the distinctively agricultural States. A glance at a map showing the locations of the various foreign elements of our population would increase the significance by disclosing how much greater that proportion is with the Scandinavians than with any other class of immigrants. The most reliable figures obtainable indicate that, of the Scandinavians, one out of four engages in agriculture ; of the Germans, one out of seven ; of the Irish, only one out of twelve. But this fact alone must not be over-emphasized. It does not follow that immigrants are desirable because they choose the country rather than the city. The value of the Scandinavians is that they choose a pursuit in which they excel.

In order to understand the conditions and tendency of the generation of to-day, something must be added from a close study of these children of the north, among the mountains of Norway, on the broader fields of Sweden and Denmark, in their towns, and by the all-surrounding sea. Any one who has investigated the situation on both sides of the water will realize that no class or section can be neglected in such a study, for the immigrants have come from all grades of society and from all parts of the three countries. Many times, in various parishes and cities in Norway and Sweden, I have asked men, as I met them, if they had relatives or intimate friends settled in America, and I cannot recall a single negative answer. Peasants in out-of-theway valleys in the Norwegian mountains or in northern Sweden, fishermen, tradesmen in the cities, editors, government officials, and university professors, — all gave me the same reply. Every class is bound to America by the closest ties. An excellent example of one of the Swedish nobility settling in the United States is found in the late Baron Nils Posse, who was so well known in educational circles. Not since the English immigration of the seventeenth century has there come to us such complete representation of all classes of a civilized community.

The term Scandinavian ” is convenient, but at best only broadly generic. As descriptive of Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, it is even looser than the use of “ British” to describe the English, Scotch, and Welsh collectively. We all know that there is no Scandinavian language, no Scandinavian nation, but we do not so well realize that Sweden and Denmark have different languages, governments, and traditions. To be sure, Norway and Sweden, since 1814, have constituted a dual monarchy, but they are just as widely separated in language and tradition as Spain and Portugal, or as Russia and Poland. The physical features of the countries — the mountains, fjords, and extensive coastline of Norway, the level stretches, the lakes, and the regular coast of Sweden, and the flat, sandy plains and islands of Denmark — seem to find a spiritual counterpart in the people themselves. The typical Swede is aristocratic, assertive, fond of dignities ; he is polite, vivacious, bound to have a good time, without any far look into the future. Yet he is persistent, and capable of great energy and endurance. He is fond of music. In literature his best work has been the lyrics and epics of Bellman and Tegnér. The typical Norwegian is, above all, democratic. He is simple, severe, intense, often radical and visionary. There lies an unknown quantity of passion in him, a capacity for high, even turbulent endeavor, but rarely the qualities of a great leader. He too is fond of music, but with a dramatic element. In his literature of this century, even more than in his music, the dramatic predominates. The towering figures of Björnson and Ibsen, great in both drama and novel, belong not merely to Norway, but to the world. The Dane is the Southerner of the Scandinavians, though still a conservative ; gay, but not to excess. He is preëminently a small farmer or a trader, ready and easy-going, not given to great risks, but quick to see a bargain and shrewd in making it. His interests have led him out from his small kingdom in all directions, so that he, more than his brothers to the north, has yielded to foreign influences. His best literature has been romantic.

Judged by American standards, these northern folk are slow, often immoderately slow. Their fastest express train rarely attains a speed of thirty miles an hour, and does not run at all in the winter. The ordinary trains from Christiania north, some years ago, ran only during the day, and passengers were obliged to go to an inn for the night. All three peoples, down to the stolidest laborer, mountaineer, or fisherman, are industrious and frugal. Nature is no spendthrift in any part of the Scandinavian countries. Small economies are the alphabet of her teachings. Only by diligence are the treasures in land and sea wrung from her unwilling grasp.

Björnstjerne Björnson, one of the most striking and original figures of the century in Norwegian politics and letters, himself an enthusiastic patriot and a radical, wrote some years ago to Professor Hjärne, of Upsala, in Sweden, concerning the Norwegian people : “The Norwegians are, in my opinion, not that people in the north which is least gifted or has the weakest character. But ... its aims are not far reaching. It is not so grand as the Swedish people. — not so flippant, either, perhaps. It is not so industrious and faithful as the Danish people, — not so zealous, either, perhaps. It takes hold and lets go, it lets go and takes hold, of persons and aims. It will exert itself to the utmost, but it demands speedy and signal success. Its ambition is not so great as its vanity. Hot-headed, impetuous, in small things, it. is patient in great ones. . . . The condition of conditions [for great things] is the right of self-determination.”

The Scandinavian countries belong to a group of five or six European states which are set down, in ordinary statistical works, as practically without illiteracy ; that is, with less than one per cent of persons unable to read and write. These figures are confirmed in the case of Sweden by the statistics of the army recruits. They also gain in meaning immensely when compared with those for some other countries of Europe from which there has been large emigration. Austro-Hungary shows thirty per cent of illiteracy, Italy forty-one, Russia nearly eighty. An educational requirement would debar a large part of these immigrants ; but however rigidly the United States might enforce it, the Scandinavians would be only very slightly affected. They have actually done for themselves, without flourish or bragging, what we, with our boasted system of public schools, have not yet been able to do. In nine years spent in Minneapolis I became personally acquainted with hundreds of them, and in my visits to the various sections of Minnesota and the neighboring States, where they are thickly settled, I met hundreds more. Not a single adult among them all, so far as I observed, was unable to read and write. On the other hand, some of the physicians, ministers, and teachers were men educated in the universities of Christiania, Copenhagen, Upsala, and Lund.

In the matter of religion, all Scandinavians are most uncompromising Protestants. There are barely enough Catholic exceptions in Europe and the United States together to prove that conversion to the Roman Catholic faith is possible for them. Dislike of Catholicism is rather an instinct, coming down from Reformation times, than a matter of knowledge or close observation. It is so strong as an innate sentiment that, consciously or unconsciously, it colors their relations in politics and in society. The distrust of the Irish, which sometimes takes active form, is at bottom religious, and not racial.

Few of them come here without some political knowledge and experience. Freedom, republican institutions, constitutional government, and elections are no novelties. The Norwegian lives under the extremely democratic constitution of 1814, and on the 17th of May, on both sides of the Atlantic, celebrates its adoption. In Norway all titles of nobility have been abolished. The essential difference between the Norwegian system and our own is that in the former a property qualification is still retained. The Swede since the reforms of 1866, and the Dane since those of 1849 and 1866, have lived under much the same conditions as the Norwegian, though in both Sweden and Denmark there is still a noble class. It has been natural, therefore, for all three nationalities to fall in with the method of government in the United States, and at once to take a normal part. There have been none of the excesses characteristic of the use of a new-found liberty.

With such equipments as these, the Scandinavians have come into the United States, not for adventure, but with serious purpose; not merely to get away from Europe, but to “ arrive ” somewhere in America. Most of them have been far from typical Swedes, Danes, or Norwegians. Conservatism and slowness, with them, have often degenerated into stolidity, independence into stubbornness, and shrewdness into insincerity. They have sometimes been clannish ; but how can any class with a foreign speech avoid clannishness ? It is a necessary stage in the evolution, and, with the people from the north, only a stage. Out of it, through the gates of the English language, speedy naturalization, and increased prosperity, they pass into broader relations. Until the recent increase of the urban element, none of the three nationalities has deliberately settled apart, intensifying its peculiarities. They mingle freely with each other and with the Americans in business and politics. Intermarriages are by no means uncommon. In the complex people, or mixture of peoples, which may hereafter be called Scandinavian will appear many of the qualities of each component. Fresh additions will continue to reinforce the old, while the third and fourth generations cannot lose completely the original characteristics. They will be sturdy, independent, and Protestant; they will be intelligent, persistent, patient, and thrifty. We shall not, therefore, expect the current of their life to run counter to that of the nation.

For this hopeful expectation there is good historical reason. America has an experience of Scandinavian colonization more than two centuries old, and the result shows what may be expected from the next two centuries. The Swedish settlement of the seventeenth century is doubly instructive: because it was formed from the same classes of society and followed the same lines as the movement of the last fifty years, and because the Swede of the seventeenth century and the Swede of the nineteenth century, in essential characteristics, are one. Two hundred years have wrought far less change in him than in his cousin of Germany or England. The colony on the Delaware was like an experiment in irrigation : the nature of the result must be the same, whether the water be applied by the bucketful in Delaware or by turning a great stream upon the prairies of the Northwest.

Before the second generation of English or Dutch settlers in America had grown to manhood, the Swedes began their colonization. The colony had been originally planned by Gustavus Adolphus in 1624. It was to be no mere commercial speculation, no mere haven for aristocratic adventurers, but “ a blessing to the common man,” a place for “ a free people with wives.” But sterner duties took the energies of the great king, and it remained for his daughter, Queen Christina, and his faithful Oxenstjerna to carry out the plans. From 1638 to 1655 the Swedish flag floated over a Swedish colony on the banks of the Delaware, and then disappeared forever as a sign of sovereignty in America. In these years several hundreds of settlers had there acquired a home. Their justice in dealing with the Indians had prevented any massacre or war. Their shrewdness and thrift had sent back to Sweden many a cargo of furs. Their loyalty and piety had built the fort and the church side by side. Dutch and English threats did not destroy the prosperity of the company ; and when an expedition set out for New Sweden in 1654, about one hundred families who had made preparations to go were left behind for lack of accommodations.

Sweden seems thus to have had a touch of the “ America fever ” as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. The disease, however, did not become chronic, for in 1656 New Sweden became a part of New Netherland, and in 1664 a part of New York. The prosperity of the colony continued, and by the end of the seventeenth century it numbered about one thousand, scattered along both banks of the Delaware.

It was only a handful of quiet, industrious men and women who made up the colony of farmers. Nor was it continually reinforced by additions from Sweden. It cannot be said to have exercised any powerful or controlling influence on colonial life. But as an element it was highly desirable. It contributed only good blood and sturdy good sense to a heterogeneous population that all too often sorely needed just these qualities. The Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, who had lived long among their descendants, wrote in 1888 : “ I make bold to say that no better stock has been contributed (in proportion to its numbers) toward giving a solid basis to society under republican forms than these hardy, honest, industrious, law-abiding, God-fearing Swedish settlers on the banks of the Christiana in Delaware. While I have never heard of a very rich man among them, I have never heard of a pauper. I cannot recall the name of a statesman or distinguished law-giver among them, nor of a rogue nor a felon.” For two centuries can this Swedish thread in our fabric be clearly traced, and to-day many a man bearing the familiar Swedish name of Nelson, Thompson, or Anderson is indebted to the Swedes on the Delaware for characteristics as well as a name. One of these descendants gave clear evidence that he was no degenerate son of New Sweden, for in the defense of Fort Sumter Major Robert Anderson displayed virtues worthy of the terrible field of Lützen, where Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes sacrificed themselves to win religious freedom for millions who were not of their blood.

The story of the nineteenth-century Scandinavian immigration is but that of the seventeenth-century Swedish settlement, revised and rewritten on an immense scale. With a slight modification. the quaint words of Thomas Paskell’s letter from Philadelphia in 1683 are true in the great West to-day : “ They [the Swedes] weer but ordinarily cloathed, but since the English came, they have gotten fine cloaths and are going proud.” The first result of the later movement, both for the adopted country and for the immigrant, has been economic. The prime motive of the emigration throughout has been the betterment of material conditions. With few exceptions, political and religious persecution has played no part whatever. The forerunners of the later thousands were certain Norwegians who emigrated in the twenties and thirties, — men of the poorest classes of the communities whence they came, but not paupers or criminals. They were squeezed out from the bottom of society. escaping as it were through cracks and crevices. The average quality, however, steadily improved from the first, though poverty at home has always been one of the commonest reasons for emigration. Down to about 1878 the great majority came from the country parishes, where the dearest ambition was to own land, the more the better. But they could not expect to gain more than a few lean acres even by the hard, unceasing labor of a lifetime. From America came letters full of stories of prosperity. Occasionally a man returned to his old home, and men tramped scores of miles to hear him tell of a land of promise, which, if it did not flow with milk and honey, at least abounded with fabulously rich, level land, to be had at a nominal price. Sometimes these fascinating advantages were set forth, with purely benevolent intent, in a little pamphlet, rather more naïve and truthful than those circulated later by railroad and state land commissioners and immigration agents. I found one of these pamphlets, printed in the early forties, in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, and one of the advantages, described in boldfaced type, was that land was so plenty that the pigs and cattle might be allowed to run at will. What more could a poor peasant ask ? So the Scandinavians passed by the coast States, by the middle Western States, where their longing for land at a dollar and a quarter an acre could not be satisfied, and streamed into the Northwest: into Illinois and Wisconsin in the forties, into Iowa and Minnesota in the fifties, and then, as good government land grew scarcer, into Nebraska, Dakota, and the Far West. The Southwest, attracted almost none of them, partly because of their hatred of slavery, partly because of the climate. Since 1835, when La Salle County, Illinois, received the first company, the Scandinavian has been among the foremost in redeeming the wilderness of prairie and forest. No other class of immigrants, and few Americans, have been so ready to undergo the hardship, privation, and isolation of the frontier for the sake of a far-distant competence. New-comers filtered through the old settlements, where land was well occupied and its price had risen, to the new regions beyond. They did not usually come empty-handed, since the average man brought about a hundred dollars in specie or exchange. This was put into land as speedily as possible, a hut was built, and a home was begun. Some years ago I became well acquainted with one of these average men, a young Swede. He had brought a little money with him, and by working two years on a farm he had saved enough to buy twenty acres of tilled land. Upon this he had had a shanty built, which, in the evolution of the estate, was to become a storeroom. After another year of work for wages he was married, and the shanty became a home. Men who had come before 1850, and had settled in Illinois and Wisconsin, were in 1870, in many cases, wealthy farmers, owning four hundred and even six hundred acres of land, and worth twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars. Ease and independence had not been won by speculation or by politics, but by hard work, care, thrift, and the normal increase in the value of their farms. Exactly the same thing is still going on in the Northwest wherever there is farm land open to settlers, as in northern Minnesota and North Dakota. In a quiet, determined way, the Scandinavian is gaining a home for himself and better conditions for his children. It is simply because he puts a higher value upon land-owning than any other immigrant, and has generally preferred to settle upon cheap wild land instead of purchasing at a higher price land already cultivated, or settling down in town, that millions of dollars have been so rapidly added to the valuation of the Northwestern States, like Minnesota and Iowa. The extension of railroads in turn attracting more settlers, the development of manufactures, particularly milling, and the increase of trade have been greatly hastened as a result of the Scandinavian’s thrift and steadiness, qualities in which even the German cannot equal him.

It has been asserted by a noted writer on immigration that one reason why the Scandinavians have been so successful is that their standard of living is lower than that of other peoples, — the Americans or Germans, for example. In other words, they sell everything they can, and live upon the rest. My own experience and observation among them do not confirm this. In 1886 I spent six weeks in the home of a Danish farmer in Minnesota, and frequently called upon his neighbors, both Swedes and Norwegians. There seemed to be no inferiority in their homes or their tables as compared with those of Americans in similar circumstances. On the frontier the same holds true, so far as I have observed. The standard of living in the log hut in a clearing in the forest, or in a sod house on the prairie, is about the same, whether the owner is American, German, or Scandinavian.

Connected with the economic gain from the filling-up of the thinly settled regions is another which also springs from that strong sense of individuality and independence which characterizes the northern Teutons. Organized emigration has been quite unknown among them. There has been no exploitation of their labor by agents abroad or by American capitalists. They have come as individuals, as families, or as voluntary companies, and they have settled in the same fashion. In general, it is true that there is among them no large permanent class of men who have nothing but their hands. Great numbers of them are willing to serve for some years as farm - hands, domestics, or operatives, while they are learning our language and getting a start, but they are not content to continue hired laborers. An independent business, however small, a farm or a shop of their own, is their ambition, and no labor is too severe to gain it. In the last fifteen years many people have been emigrating from the towns of Scandinavia, especially from those of Sweden, and these have located mainly in our cities and manufacturing towns. Large additions to the Eastern cities have been made in this period, and they seem to be joining the permanent wage-earning class. In Brooklyn, for example, the number of foreign - born Scandinavians rose from about 4000 in 1880 to 16,000 in 1890. Though many have made their mark in great commercial enterprises, it is as farmers that the Scandinavians have been preeminently successful. In a class by themselves belong the domestics, — the house servant, the coachman, and the general utility man. They are faithful, hard-working, and honest, as a rule, but they have a strong liking for doing things in their own way, regardless of instructions. They lack the faculty of implicit obedience. In the West the quality of those in domestic service seems to he better than it is in the East, The proletariat is not largely recruited from them. Secret societies and intrigues are not their specialties. The anarchist does not look to them for allies or supplies.

The difficult problem of municipal government is of course complicated by the recent addition of a Scandinavian element. Any increase of the percentage of aliens in the urban population adds a danger. But it must be remembered that the new element is fairly well educated, and not inexperienced in self-government. It is capable and ready to assist in the solution of the problems, and is demonstrating its usefulness for that purpose. Minneapolis gives a good example in connection with its public school system, which is conceded to be one of the best in the United States. Any one acquainted with the development of the schools of that city must recognize the great services of Norwegians.

The political influence of the Scandinavians has been second to the economic. In no case have they exercised an influence proportionate to their numbers. In Minnesota they come nearer doing so than elsewhere, but even there, with about one fourth of the population, they have rarely had more than one sixth of the members in the state legislature. Of course, in towns and counties which are solidly filled up by Scandinavians, most of the offices are commonly taken by them. In the early years they were too much absorbed in home - building and money-getting to give much attention to politics, but with prosperity came a chance to indulge their taste for public affairs. The Norwegian in particular seems to have a penchant for politics. He is a controversialist by nature, and takes delight in the excitement of a campaign. He has a clear notion at least of equality with every other man, and in shrewdness in pushing toward his political goal neither the Dane nor the Swede can compare with him.

An ingrained antipathy to slavery was undoubtedly the most powerful impulse which before the war carried the Scandinavians into the Republican party. The example of the earlier immigrants, the anti-slavery tradition, and the prestige of the party after the war predisposed the new-comers in favor of the Republicans. It was a perfectly natural choice, and indicates nothing more than a conservative mind. I find very little evidence that dislike of the Irish had anything to do with the loyalty of the Scandinavians to the Republican party. The war brought some of them prominently before the public, and soon afterward they began to appear frequently in the state legislature in Wisconsin, as well as in purely local offices. They have filled various state offices in Wisconsin and Minnesota since 1869, when a Swede was first elected secretary of state for Minnesota. In 1892, and again in 1894, a Norwegian was elected governor of Minnesota, and that State is at present represented in the United States Senate by a Norwegian. In general, the allegiance to party has been stronger than any race feeling. Only very rarely has a Scandinavian Democratic candidate been elected by the aid of Scandinavian Republican votes. A Swede’s loyalty to a Swede is usually stronger than his loyalty to a Dane or to a Norwegian. In fact, there is always an undercurrent of jealousy among the three nationalities. But it is rarely strong enough to overcome the ordinary obligations and motives of politics ; and while each party usually apportions its candidates among the various nationalities, its failure to do so does not materially affect the result. For example, a state ticket in Minnesota, on which both the candidates for governor and secretary of state were Norwegians, polled the usual Swedish and Danish vote. Some years ago, in Rockford, Illinois, the Democrats nominated a Swede for alderman, against a native American in a ward strongly Swedish and Republican. Though there was no particular issue, the Swedes could not be moved by the offer, and the American was elected. Demands are sometimes made of conventions and of successful candidates, but these cases are rare, and confined mostly to municipal affairs. Nearly all who have risen to any prominence in state or national elections thus far have been Republicans, and the majority of them have been Norwegians. Out of six Scandinavian Representatives in Congress five have been Norwegians, though this proportion does not hold good in the state offices, which are more proportionately divided. Four of the six Representatives were Republicans, two Populists.

Towards the close of the decade 1880— 90 the allegiance of the Scandinavians to the Republican party was gradually shaken. The original anti-slavery impulse had completely died out; the agrarian discontent affected those who were farmers, as it did Americans of that class, causing them to look to political forces to relieve them ; the increased percentage of immigrants who went to the towns furnished material for labor agitators. Finally, the tariff reform sentiment had gained a great hold upon them ; so great, in fact, that one of their Representatives was one of six Republicans who voted for the Mills bill in 1888. Altogether, the division of the Scandinavians, politically, is going on more and more along the same lines as among the Americans. The Populist party has gained the most in the readjustment of party affiliations, and has twice elected a Norwegian to Congress from the seventh Minnesota district. Though the Republican party still holds the majority of the Scandinavian voters, it can no longer make a respectable claim of a monopoly of them. A fair index of the loosening of party ties among them is found in the changed politics of their press. All told, they have about one hundred and thirty newspapers. In 1885, probably three fourths of those who had any political bias were Republican. At present less than one half of them can be so classed, the remainder being chiefly Independent or Democratic. A few are Prohibitionist, while others are Populist. The change of politics has not usually been due to a transfer of ownership. The editor of Norden, of Chicago, a paper which became Democratic in 1888, told me that the change was made only after a careful investigation had shown that such a move would be approved by its supporters.

Legislative acts due directly to Scandinavian influences are few. The most characteristic measure is that passed by the legislature of North Dakota in 1893, providing for courts of conciliation modeled after those which have worked so successfully in Norway. Attempts to pass a similar law in Minnesota and in Wisconsin had been made before, but had failed. The machinery of the act has not been widely used, and it is too soon to judge of the value of the law. Temperance legislation, whether high license in Minnesota or prohibition in North Dakota and Kansas, has had strong Scandinavian support, especially in the Lutheran churches.

On the social side, the people from the Northland are quite as remarkable, by contrast, for what they have not done as for what they have done. With rare exceptions, they have not attempted to maintain separate church schools for elementary instruction. Where other than public schools are opened, it is in the summer vacation, and for the purpose of teaching the church catechism and the mother tongue. The length of the term varies, sometimes extending through three months. The teacher, usually a minister or a student in some church seminary, is paid by the parents of the children taught or by the parish. Often the public school building is used, in country villages where the Scandinavians predominate. The maintenance of these summer schools is by no means general. The influence of the younger people is often against it, for they look upon it as an un-American custom, an attempt to perpetuate a language and distinctions which are destined to disappear among them. Not infrequently they revolt against the mild paternalism of the clergy who desire to keep them in the old paths, and the result is either indifference or a complete break with the old church. The public school is the great foe to clannishness, and their loyalty to it is one of the best evidences of the genuineness of their Americanization. It is a principle as well as a practice. Their vehement opposition to the famous Bennett law, enacted in Wisconsin a few years ago, would seem to contradict this statement; but a close examination of the law will make it clear that the resistance, in which Lutherans and Catholics, curiously enough, were allied in the Democratic party, was not to the principle of compulsory education, but to the manner of its application.

The great adaptability of the Scandinavians to the circumstances and customs of their adopted country is acknowledged on all sides. Whenever and wherever they have transplanted themselves, whether in England in the ninth century, in Normandy in the tenth, in Sicily in the eleventh, or in America in the nineteenth, the same process of transformation has taken place. No other people in all history has such a record. In the United States they have eagerly learned English, and have quickly done so because of its similarity to their own languages in structure and vocabulary. Of course, men who have come hither as adults always prefer the old speech, and in some districts in the country and in Scandinavian quarters of the cities it will be heard almost exclusively, because of the large numbers of the foreign-born. But the second generation quite invariably choose English, and many of them have forgotten the language of their fathers. At a town convention which I attended in 1894, in Chisago County, a large Swedish community, the proceedings went on smoothly in English for some time, until an elderly Swede became somewhat puzzled, and asked the chairman, a young Swede, to explain the matter in Swedish. From that point all motions were put first in English, and immediately after in Swedish. Remarks were addressed to the chair in both languages.

In matters of religion Scandinavians have shown a peculiar facility in conforming to the bad American custom of multiplying denominations. In the home countries, though there is now practically complete toleration, the existence of a state church and an episcopal organization has maintained a good degree of uniformity. Neither of these restraining influences has ever operated in this country. There have been no bishops to check the tendency to diversity. Liberty to adopt any creed and to change church relations at will is freely used. The zeal of the Norwegian in controversy has found even a better field in the church than in politics. Before 1890, when three divisions united, there were five bodies of Norwegian Lutherans, while the Danes were comfortable with two, and the Swedes lagged behind with only one. What the Swedes lack in Lutheranism they make up in “ dissenting sects,” though none of them are large. The Mormon church has a very large number of Scandinavians, principally Danes, though few of them have been converted in this country.

The statistics of intemperance and illegitimacy, which are sometimes so alarming in parts of the Scandinavian countries, do not appear to find a parallel among the Scandinavians in America. But all such statistics are unsatisfactory, and frequently untrustworthy. Generalization is, therefore, unsafe. There are drunkenness and illegitimacy among them here, but I have not observed that it is more difficult to maintain order and decency in a city like Minneapolis with its Norwegians and Swedes, than in St. Paul with its Irish and Germans. Of the pauper and criminal classes the Scandinavians have a smaller proportion than any other alien element except the British, while of the insane, judging from Minnesota, they seem to have a larger percentage than the Germans or British. Unfortunately, in ordinary statistics of this nature, the second generation is usually put down as native-born, with no hint as to parentage beyond some peculiarity of name.

Several forces are at work against any distinct permanent influence of the Scandinavian elements of our population. Some of these I have already touched upon, as rapid and thorough Americanization and stanch Protestantism. The Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes are particularly free from other than traditional ties binding them to the mother countries. None of the three northern kingdoms is great or powerful in the affairs of Europe. Patriotism is a sentiment of the parish or the homestead more than of the nation. No dramatic outbursts of national sentiment on the other side rekindle the old enthusiasms here. No great causes centring in the Old World continually demand the intense sympathy and financial aid of any class of the Scandinavians, knitting them closely together. Their church organization is decentralized, centrifugal, not centripetal, recognizing no unity under a supreme temporal head. It cannot, therefore, be used as a potent political force. Their nearest approach to a widespread, peculiar society that can be utilized by a skillful “ boss ” is a national musical union.

As Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes they fast disappear ; merging, not into Scandinavians, but into Americans. They earn their rights as such, and are proud of the possession. They readily fit into places among our better classes, and, without hammering or chiseling, give strength and stability to our social structure, if not beauty and the highest culture. Because of their habits of thought, their respect for education, and their conservatism, the difficulties of adjusting ourselves to their presence are at a minimum. The Scandinavians will not furnish the great leaders, but they will be in the front ranks of those who follow, striving to make the United States strong and prosperous, — “a blessing to the common man.” As Americans, they will be builders, not destroyers ; safe, not brilliant. Best of all, their greatest service will be as a mighty steadying influence, reinforcing those high qualities which we sometimes call Puritan, sometimes American.

Kendric Charles Babcock.