ECONOMIC FORCES AT WORK.
In the many monographs and more pretentious works dealing with various
phases of the economic history of the United States, much attention
has been given to the tariff, manufacturing, banking, currency,
transportation, and public lands. Only recently have the economic
results of immigration begun to receive the attention which their
importance deserves. For a long time the excellent work of Professor
Richmond Mayo-Smith, _Emigration and Immigration_ (1890), notable for
the strength and breadth of its general treatment, was quite alone in
its field. Mere statistical studies no longer suffice, and just as the
census-taking of the Federal Government has changed from the simple,
old-fashioned inventory of numbers--so many heads, black and white,
native-born and foreign-born--to an elaborate investigation of the life
problem of the population, so the meaning of immigration as a whole, and
of Scandinavian immigration in particular, requires a discussion
extending beyond annual and decennial statistics and maps of the density
of settlement.
In the economic development of the Northwest, as compared with the
history of the Eastern, Middle, or Southern States during the nineteenth
century, the three principal topics are immigration, the Federal land
policy, and improvements in transportation. In a peculiar manner the
last two subjects are interwoven with the story of the Norwegians,
Swedes, and Danes in America. When people by the hundreds of thousands
were settled in the West, when commerce and manufacturing arose upon the
sound basis of a prospering agriculture, then and not till then,
protection, currency, and bimetallism might be accepted as real and
immediate issues.
The Scandinavian immigrants along the frontiers, like the other pioneers
all through the prairie west, were from the first vitally interested in
securing some form of cheap transportation of the produce of the farms
to a good market; railroads were indispensable to the development of the
agricultural areas of the Great West. Western Pennsylvania might find
profit in 1794 in shipping the quintessence of its agriculture across
the mountains in demijohns; the cattlemen of the South and Southwest
might drive their products to market on the hoof; but at the very best
these were exceptional, inelastic, and primitive methods. Many pioneer
Norwegians and Swedes in Minnesota and Iowa were obliged to carry their
wheat and corn forty and fifty miles to have it ground for their
families, but they could not hope to haul any great amount of ordinary
farm produce over the abominable roads of the West for a distance
greater than forty miles and make a profit.[184] Without the hope of
railroads, the vast stretches of cereal-producing land in the
trans-Mississippi would long have remained virgin soil. Yet without
assurance that population would rapidly increase in numbers and in
complexity of life, thus giving a large traffic in both directions, no
railroad company would build out into the thinly settled area.[185]
[184] _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_, July 21, 1870; interview in 1890
with the Rev. U. V. Koren, the first Norwegian Lutheran minister
permanently located west of the Mississippi. Miss Bremer in
October, 1850, described the road over which the early settlers
in Wisconsin went 30 and 40 miles to market: "the newborn roads
of Wisconsin, which are no roads at all, but a succession of
hills and holes and water pools in which first one wheel sank
and then the other, while the opposite one stood high up in
the air.... To me, that mode of travelling seemed really
incredible.... They comforted me by telling me that the
diligence was not in the habit of being upset very often!"
_Homes of the New World_, II, 235-236.
[185] It was on faith in the future of the northern zone of the
Northwest, based upon observation, that the Great Northern
Railroad was built without any land-grant or subsidy such as
the Northern Pacific and other roads demanded and got.
Broadly speaking, then, the real problem of the Northwestern frontier
after 1850 was: how to put more and ever more men of capacity,
endurance, strength, and adaptability into the upper Mississippi and Red
River valleys, men who first break up the prairie sod, clear the brush
off the slopes, drain the marshes, build the railroads, and do the
thousands and one hard jobs incident to pioneer life, and then turn to
the building of factories and towns and cities. Not every sort of man
who could hold a plow or wield a hoe would do: Chinese coolies, for
example, would hardly be considered desirable, even with all their
capacity for hard work, persistence, and patience. Furthermore, it is
plain now, that the West could not have looked to the Eastern States
alone to send out an industrial army sufficient in numbers and spirit
for the conquest of the new empire and the extraction of its varied
resources at the desired speed. The demands were too severe, the rewards
too remote and uncertain for the average prosperous native-born citizen.
The aliens from the western side of the Atlantic, as it were by
regiments and battalions, must re-enforce the companies westward-bound
from the older States; in such a situation the Scandinavians were all
but indispensable to rapid material progress in the Northwest after the
middle of the last century.
It is not easy to realize how attractive to the Northland immigrants
were the broad, level lands of the West, to be had from the United
States Government on the easiest of terms, both before and after the
passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. Scarcely in their dreams had they
conceived of soil so fertile, so readily tilled, and so cheaply
acquired. To speak to a Norwegian from Thelemarken, to a Swede from
Smaaland, or to a Dane from the misty, sandy coast of Jutland, about
rich, rolling prairies stretching away miles upon miles, about land
which was neither rocky, nor swampy, nor pure sand, nor set up at an
angle of forty-five degrees, about land which could be had almost for
the asking in fee simple and not by some semi-manorial title--this was to
speak to his imagination rather than to his understanding. The letters
from immigrants to their old friends in Europe continually dilated on
these advantages, sometime with a curious mingling of humor and pathos.
One of these communications, which was printed as a small pamphlet in
1850, sets forth in large letters, that the land was so plentiful that
the pigs and cattle were allowed to run at will.[186] What more could
be asked of Providence by a poor peasant or "husmand," owing to his
landlord, for the little strip of land on which he lived, the labor of
two or three days each week?[187]
[186] A copy of this interesting little pamphlet, without signature,
was found in the National Library in Stockholm.
[187] Young, _Labor in Europe and America_, 696. Laing, _Journal of a
Residence in Norway_ (1834), 151, describes the conditions in a
parish, Levanger, near Throndhjem. There fifty estates were
entered to pay land tax. Out of a population of 2465, 124 were
proprietors cultivating their own land; 47 were tenants leasing
lands, and 144 were "housemen" or tenants owing labor for their
land.
These strictly economic advantages of soil and price were not the only
attractions for the sons of the Northlands. Both the traveller and the
prospector for a site for a settlement were deeply impressed by the
general appearance of the rolling country of the Northwest with its
abundance of streams and lakes. During her visit to Wisconsin and
Minnesota in the fall of 1850, Frederika Bremer saw with quite prophetic
vision, the possibilities of the region:
"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 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.... Scandinavians who are well off in the old country
ought not to leave it. But such as are too much contracted at home, and
who desire to emigrate, should come to Minnesota. The climate, the
situation, the character of the scenery, agrees with our people better
than that of any other of the American States, and none of them appear
to me to have a greater or a more beautiful future before them than
Minnesota. Add to this that the rich soil of Minnesota is not yet bought
up by speculators, but may everywhere be purchased at government
prices.... There are here already a considerable number of Norwegians
and Danes."[188] The Swedish air-castle took material shape rapidly;
during forty years the name Minnesota, even more than Iowa, or
Wisconsin, was a name to conjure with among the laborers and would-be
farmers of the old kingdoms.[189]
[188] Bremer, _Homes of the New World_, II, 314-315.
[189] The charm of this name was illustrated in a curious way during
the journey of the writer and another American through the
mountains of central Norway in the summer of 1890. One early
evening they came to the cabin of a _sæter_, or summer pasture,
high up on the side of Gaustafjeld, and asked to be lodged for
the night. It appeared that the only room available for
strangers was already occupied by two young men from
Christiania; but when the conversation developed the fact that
both the late-comers were from America, and one from Minnesota,
the woman of the house hastened off into the next room, ordered
out the two Norwegians, and announced on returning that the room
was at the service of the foreigners!
Of the peculiar fitness of the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes for this
promotion of economic progress in a great section of the country, there
is practically a unanimous opinion. A dispassionate, mature estimate is
expressed officially by an agent of the British Government sent out to
study the question of immigration in the United States. "It is generally
admitted," he states, "that physically, morally, and socially, no better
class of immigrants enter the United States. In some respects they are
the most desirable of all."[190] A first-hand observer of their work as
western farmers wrote in 1868 concerning the settlers in a Norwegian
township in Minnesota, "They open their farms quicker, raise better
stock than most any other class, and quickly become wealthy."[191] In a
hearing before the Industrial Commission in 1899, Hermann Stump, a
prominent German, testified that the Scandinavians "are really the best
immigrants who come to the United States."[192]
[190] _Report of the Board of Trade of Great Britain on Alien
Immigration to The United States_, 211, 212.
[191] Goddard, _Where to Emigrate and Why_, 247.
[192] _Report of the Industrial Commission_, XV, 22.
While the Scandinavians were admirably fitted to become substantial
citizens and to develop their own properties, and while the prospect of
possessing a farm was the most potent and pervading influence affecting
their movements after about 1850, the very high rate of wages paid in
the United States, as compared with the wages in Europe, was everywhere
an important factor among the immediate attractions. All of the western
States, in the first decade of their growth, were exceedingly anxious to
secure settlers who should take up and improve the vacant square miles,
thus adding to the population and to the taxable values of the
commonwealth. At the same time there was a large and steady demand for
wage-labor; the farmers needed helpers; the construction of internal
improvements, begun and projected, like the rapidly expanding railroad
systems, could be carried on only by the aid of an abundance of
laborers.[193]
[193] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 29 ff.
These needs could not be met by any considerable migration of laborers
from the eastern States, for there the development of manufacturing and
of transportation by land and by sea would operate to keep up wages and
so to hold the laborers. The hard labor of the Far West, therefore, must
be done, if done at all, by those who had not already found places for
themselves in the industrial system of the United States, and for such
services a good rate of wages would be paid, or at least a rate
sufficient to draw the desired labor. In 1851 the $15 per month received
by some Swedes working as farm hands near Buffalo, New York, was
considered "big wages."[194] At the same time laborers on railroad
construction in the West were receiving $.75 and $1 per day. Whether
measured as real or nominal wages, these rates were certainly higher
than even the average skilled laborer could earn in Norway or
Sweden.[195] Tho the wages in the peninsular kingdoms rose considerably
from 1850 to 1875, there was still at the later date and afterwards a
large differential in favor of the American scale, whether for skilled
or unskilled laborers. The experienced agricultural laborer in the
fields of Illinois or Wisconsin received two or three times as much as
the corresponding worker in Norway and Sweden, while in new States like
Minnesota the multiple was even greater.[196] Still more marked were the
differences between skilled laborers, such as carpenters and smiths, in
America and Europe even after the panic of 1873.[197]
[194] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 17.
[195] _Ibid._, 29. For work on the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad,
Mattson received $.75 per day, and paid for board $1.50 a week,
but the determination of the real wages, per month, requires a
liberal deduction from these day-wages, for the process of
acclimatization was severe in such malarial districts as that
in which Mattson worked, and few men at first worked more than
fifteen or twenty days in the month.
[196] The following tabulation is drawn from the statistics of Dr.
Young, _Labor in Europe and America_, to illustrate the
differences of wages. Personal inquiries among men from all
parts of Northern Europe confirm in a general way these figures
reported from Europe. The European rates are reduced to gold
values, while those for the United States are in paper money
values, and should be discounted 10% or 12% to put them on a
par with the other rates.
Summer Winter
Experienced agric. With Without With Without
laborers, per day Board Board Board Board
Sweden, 1873 $ .66 $ $.46 $
Norway, 1873 .28-.43 .42-.55 .21-.31 .55
Denmark, 1872 .54 .80 .40 .60
U.S. (Western), 1870 1.34 1.84 .97 1.40
Minnesota, 1870 1.60 2.50 1.17 1.67
U.S. (Western), 1874 1.15 1.58 .93 1.35
Minnesota, 1874 1.00 1.50 .75 1.25
[197] _Ibid._
Mechanics and skilled
laborers, per day Blacksmiths Carpenters
Sweden, 1873 $.80 $.80
Norway, 1873 .90 .85
Denmark, 1873 .85 .65-.85
U.S. (Western), 1870 & 1874 2.88 & 2.66 2.98 & 2.72
Minnesota, 1870 & 1874 3.03 & 3.00 2.92 & 2.50
Domestic servants, female, per month
Sweden, 1873 $2.14-8.00
Norway, 1873 (cooks) 2.42-3.59
U.S. (Western), 1870 & 1874 9.43 & 9.28
Minnesota, 1870 8.98
The eloquence of these figures, and of the conditions behind them, was
not left to do its work by chance in the private letters of immigrants
or in the occasional pamphlet. States and counties, as well as railroad
corporations disseminated very widely and systematically the knowledge
of the opportunities open to the laborer in the great West. If he were a
man who would progress from a temporary tho necessary factor in
construction or in the field, to a permanent settler taking up vacant
land, so much the better for the State and the corporation. Fortunately
for those great railroads, which were pushing construction and receiving
large subsidies in public lands, they found just such men in the Swedes
and Norwegians. As the Rock Island railroad pushed across Illinois and
Iowa, as the Northern Pacific built out through Minnesota and Dakota,
and as the road now known as the Great Northern carried its lines from
St. Paul into the Red River valley, and on across North Dakota, the
Scandinavian and the Irishman supplied the demand for labor front 1850
to 1890, in precisely the same way as the Italian, Pole, Mexican and
Greek have been doing in later years.
When construction of a railroad ended, the demand for immigrants merely
changed its form and became cumulative. The dividends of any railroad
running out into a new country depend on the development of the
tributary territory, and this is especially true of the land-grant roads
which owned half of the land within ten miles of their tracks. Thus it
came about that the Scandinavians were doubly valuable, first as
laborers for wages, and second as independent farmers in the townships
made accessible by the new lines.[198] It was, indeed, faith in human
nature, and especially Swedish and Norwegian human nature, which led to
the construction and profitable operation of hundreds of miles of new
roads in Minnesota and Dakota after 1880. One prominent railroad man
estimated that each settler (presumably each head of a family) meant in
the long run from $200 to $300 a year for the railroad.[199]
[198] Personal interviews with a large number of Swedes and Norwegians
in northwestern Minnesota, in May, 1890, brought out the fact
that many of them worked in the construction of the Northern
Pacific and Great Northern railroads, and then invested their
savings in railroad lands in the Red River valley, where they
were prosperous farmers.
[199] Mr. Powell. General Immigration Agent of the Chicago, Milwaukee
& St. Paul Railroad, in the _Milwaukee Sentinel_, Dec. 30, 1888,
p. 10.
The fulfilment of the expectations of the builders of railroads and
commonwealths was often surprisingly prompt. The prophetic insight of at
least one "captain of industry," President James J. Hill of the Great
Northern Railway Company which built its transcontinental system without
land-grant, was as sure a reliance for capital as the subsidy of the
federal Government. Speaking in 1902 at Crookston, in the center of the
great Scandinavian region in northwestern Minnesota, he described in
striking terms the growth of farm values, and of the railroad business
in some of the towns in Minnesota and North Dakota: "I took the best
towns [of the Red River valley] outside Crookston [for comparison with
towns in North Dakota].... I will give you the annual business. Warren's
last year's railroad business with our company was $86,000; Hallock,
$94,000,--a respectable sum; Stephen, $87,000; Ada, $81,000.... Langdon
[in North Dakota] ... away up towards the boundary, upon Pembina
Mountain, $210,000; Osnabrock, I hardly know where it is myself,
$101,000; Park River, $170,000; ... Bottineau, away at the west end of
the Turtle Mountains, where a few years ago people said it was too far
away; could not live there and could not raise anything if they did live
there, $258,000.... Land up there [around Bottineau], worth $3, $5, and
$8 an acre, and a few pieces $10 an acre, a few years ago, is worth
today $25 and $30 per acre."[200]
[200] _Northwest Magazine_, XX. 7, 11 (1902).
The railroads left nothing undone to stimulate the economic desire of
the Scandinavians to migrate to their particular sections of land and to
the adjoining government sections. Several companies maintained for
years regular immigration or land agents, besides a considerable and
variable corps of sub-agents, port agents, and lecturers; some of them
paid the expenses of men representing groups of prospective immigrants,
who desired to visit and report upon a particular locality. The St.
Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad advertised in "Facts about
Minnesota" (1881): "The settler--his family, household goods, live stock
and agricultural implements--will be carried from St. Paul to any point
on either of our lines at one-half the regular price."
Besides these efforts and inducements, the railroad companies prepared
handbooks in different languages, distributed them widely throughout the
East and West, and circulated them systematically in Norway, Sweden and
Denmark.[201] A few of the companies even sent special representatives
to Europe to work directly with the people of those countries. The Hon.
Hans Mattson left the office of Secretary of State in Minnesota in 1871
to become the liberally paid European agent for the Northern Pacific
Railroad whose resources he was to advertise from his headquarters in
Sweden.[202] He was not, however, to organize regular parties of
emigrants. A high official of one of the northwestern roads summed up
the matter by saying, "There is as much competition among the railroads
desiring to attract immigrants, as among dry-goods stores in aiming to
attract customers."
[201] Such pamphlets were issued by the Wisconsin Central, the Chicago
& Northwestern, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, and the
Northern Pacific railroads. Some of them were printed in
Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, and Polish.
[202] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 118 ff.
The northwestern State governments were hardly less interested in
inducing immigrants to help fill up the vacant square miles and
townships than were the railroads, for developed farms meant towns,
diversified industry, and greater assessment values, which, being
translated, meant much-needed public buildings, institutions, and
improvements. The competition of the States, for immigrants such as the
Norwegians, re-enforced and parallelled that of the railroad and land
companies. Wisconsin appointed a Commissioner of Emigration in 1852,
who resided in New York, and employed a Norwegian and a German
assistant.[203] The following year another Act created a Traveling
Emigrant Agent, and prescribed that he should "travel constantly between
this State and the city of New York," to advertise "our great natural
resources, advantages and privileges, and brilliant prospects for the
future."[204] Pamphlets by the thousand in German, Norwegian, and Dutch
were sent out in America and Europe. The office was abolished in 1855,
but in 1867 another Act created an unpaid Board of Immigration and
appropriated $2,000 for printing pamphlets in English, Welsh, German,
and the Scandinavian languages.[205] The State even went so far, in a
later Act, as to authorize the Board, in its discretion, to help with
money, "such immigrants as are determined to make Wisconsin their future
home."[206]
[203] _Laws of Wisconsin_, 1852, ch. 432; Ibid., 1853, ch. 53;
_Wisconsin Documents_, 1853, 1854, Reports of Commissioner
of Emigration.
[204] _General Acts of Wisconsin_, 1853, ch. 56.
[205] _Ibid._, 1855, ch. 3; 1867, ch. 126; 1868, ch. 120; _Governor's
Messages and Documents_, 1870, 11.
[206] _General Acts of Wisconsin_, 1869, ch. 118.
The Board was succeeded by a Commissioner (Ole C. Johnson) in 1871,
whose office was in turn abolished in 1874. The story of Wisconsin's
later organizations for promoting immigration ought almost to go into
the chapter on politics--a new Board in 1879, abolished in 1887, renewed
for two years in 1895, and revived for another two years in 1899.[207]
In 1880, at the request of the president of the Wisconsin Central
Railway Company, K. K. Kennan, agent of the land department of that
company, was also appointed agent for the State in Europe, without
expense to the State.[208]
[207] _Ibid._, 1871, ch. 155; 1874, ch. 238; 1879, ch. 176; 1887, ch.
21; 1895, ch. 235; 1899, ch. 279. The abolished Commissioner of
1874 declared the repeal was "conceived in vindictiveness and
brought about by third-rate politicians, and followed my refusal
to appoint to place in my office" certain incompetents. _Report
of Commissioner of Immigration_, 1874, 2.
[208] _Annual Report of Board of Immigration_, 1880, 6.
For the same purposes, and with the same methods, Iowa had a
Commissioner, 1860-1862, and a Board (of which the Rev. C. L. Clausen
was a member), 1870-1874, which sent agents to Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark, where they published articles in the newspapers and stirred up
emigration sentiment.[209]
[209] _Laws of Iowa_, 1860, ch. 81; 1862, ch. 11; 1870, ch, 34.
Minnesota, likewise, in 1867 created a Board of Emigration, and Hans
Mattson was appointed secretary. He proved a very efficient officer, and
not the less so because at the same time, as he admits, he acted as land
agent for one of the great railroad companies, whose line went through
Wright, Meeker, Kandiyohi, Swift and Stevens counties.[210] Of the work
of the Board, Mattson gives a convincing summary: "In the above-named
localities there were only a few widely scattered families when I went
there in 1867, while it is now (1891) one continuous Scandinavian
settlement, extending over a territory more than a hundred miles long
and dotted over with cities and towns, largely the result of the work of
the board of emigration during the years 1867, 1868, and 1869.... Our
efforts, however, in behalf of Minnesota brought on a great deal of envy
and ill-will from people in other States who were interested in seeing
the Scandinavian emigration turned towards Kansas and other States, and
this feeling went so far that a prominent newspaper writer in Kansas
accused me of selling my countrymen to a life not much better than
slavery in a land of ice, snow, and perpetual winter, where, if the poor
emigrant did not starve to death, he would surely perish with cold. Such
at that time was the opinion of many concerning Minnesota."[211]
[210] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 97, 99, 101.
[211] Mattson, _The Story of an Emigrant_, 100-101.
The secretaries or commissioners of immigration were usually men of
alien birth or extraction, and therefore intelligent and sympathetic in
their labors for succeeding immigrants.[212] Probably no State gave
better care, guidance, and protection to foreigners coming as settlers
than did Minnesota, and naturally, with a Swede as commissioner, the
Scandinavians were "preferred stock." The work of the Minnesota
commission included the appointment of interpreters to meet immigrants
at New York, Montreal, and Quebec and accompany them to Minnesota;
provision for temporary homes for the new-comers until they went to
their chosen locality; and wide publication of newspaper articles in
different languages. Pamphlets containing maps and detailed descriptions
of States and counties were distributed at railroad stations and on
steamers, in America and in foreign countries.[213] It would be
stretching the truth a little to say that these circulars sent out by
States, counties, and railroad companies were always strictly accurate
and ingenuous, but they brought the desired results, not in one campaign
alone, but year after year. Taken as a whole the energies of the State
and railroad agents, were honorable, well-managed, and highly beneficial
to both the States and the immigrants. The best evidence for this
statement lies in the figures of the censuses of 1880, 1890, and 1900
for the population of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas.[214]
[212] _Ibid._, 99, 102; _Wisconsin Legislative Manual_, 1895, 133.
[213] See Bibliographical Chapter, under the names, Hewitt, Listoe,
and Mattson, for Minnesota.
[214] See Statistical chapter, tables 5, 6, 7.
The value of so many tens of thousands of immigrants added to the assets
of western commonwealths,--so many scores of thousands of "hands," to
make use of the colloquial term for labor units,--is at once great and
difficult to measure or estimate. In economic terms, how much is a
full-grown, healthy, intelligent, literate young man worth to a
community into which he drops himself, for is he not as much a finished
labor-performing machine as a new traction engine or a span of mules,
either of which the assessor would set down in his books? The risks and
pains and costs of up-bringing through unproductive years, of educating,
of training for occupation, have all been borne by another community;
the increment of wealth arising from his labor, providence, and skill
will enrich the United States.
Yet it is not a fair test of the value of an immigrant to this country
to measure it by the cost of his bringing up and education, either by
the standards of his old home or by the American standards. Professor
Mayo-Smith pointed out the fallacy in the oft-quoted estimate of Kapp,
made up on this basis, that "the capital value of each male and female
immigrant was about $1,500 and $750 respectively, making an average of
$1125."[215] Dr. Young, formerly Chief of the United States Bureau of
Statistics, chooses as a basis the "market value" rather than the "cost
of production," and estimates the approximate yearly addition made by
each immigrant to the realized wealth of the country in the form of
farms, buildings, stock, tools, and savings, to be about $40, which,
capitalized at 5%, gives $800 as the value of each immigrant.[216] An
interesting German calculation in 1881, made in much the same way as Dr.
Young's, put the capital value of each immigrant at $1,200.[217] Another
method of gauging the amount contributed to the earnings of the country
by each immigrant, is to multiply the average daily wage of $1 by
one-fifth the total number of immigrants, and that by 300, the number
of working days in the year.[218] Taking the values of the immigrant
over fourteen years of age and under forty-five, as $1000, and
estimating conservatively that 80 per-cent of the foreign-born
enumerated in the census of 1900 reached the United States between those
ages, the Scandinavians so enumerated represented a capital value of
about $850,000,000, to which the immigration from the North countries in
the next five years added not less than $230,000,000. Viewed from one
point, this capital was just so much given by the gods of plenty to
accelerate the development of the West.
[215] Kapp, _Immigration and the New York Commissioners of
Emigration_, 146; Mayo-Smith, _Emigration and Immigration_,
ch. vi.
[216] Young, _Special Report on Immigration_ (1871), vii-ix.
[217] "According to other statistics, the average annual earnings of a
workman amount to $625, and one may safely presume that every
able-bodied workman contributes every year 1/5 of his earnings
to the increase of national wealth. Taking into consideration
the period of time of a full working capacity of emigrants
according to their age, and considering the much less working
capacity of females, and the cost of raising the children which
they bring with them, one may fairly presume that, during the
last few years, not only considerable cash capital has been
taken to the United States by emigrants, but that every one of
them carries to that country, in his labor, a capital which may
be estimated at $1200. The total value of the labor thus
conveyed to the United States during the last five years, may
therefore be estimated at about $700,000,000. No wonder that the
United States of America prosper." _Hamburger Handelsblatt_,
March 18, 1881, quoted in translation from this "leading trade
journal of Germany", in _Annual Report of the Wisconsin Board
of Immigration_, 1881, 14.
[218] J. B. Webber, in _North American Review_, CLIV, 435 (1892).
Another phase of the economic advantages of Scandinavian immigration has
to do with the cash capital brought by the incoming thousands. While the
first Norwegians were of the poorest class of the community, who escaped
from unfavorable conditions almost empty-handed, squeezed out from the
bottom of society, as it were through cracks and crevices, and while
many of the later arrivals have had no other capital than strong hands
and equally strong determination, the great proportion of adults have
brought with them average sums variously estimated from $22 to $70 each.
G. H. Schwab of New York, whose firm was general American agent for the
North German Lloyd Steamship Company, estimated the average money or
money equivalent brought by the Scandinavians, at $22 per head, probably
including children in the calculation.[219] W. W. Thomas, Jr.,
Commissioner of Immigration for Maine, and later minister to Sweden,
states that 900 Swedes who came to Maine in one year, besides clothing,
tools, and household goods, had $40,000 in cash; and elsewhere he puts
the average at $50 per head.[220] The figures from Wisconsin, which
received better material than the average, would naturally run higher;
in 1880 the official estimate of cash brought by each immigrant was
"from $60 to $70."[221] Assuming an average of 50,000 Scandinavian
immigrants per year for the last thirty years,--a safe minimum--and an
average of $50 cash per capita, the annual addition to the cash capital
of the country would be at least $2,500,000.
[219] _Forum_, XIV, 810.
[220] _Report of the Board and Commissioner of Immigration of Maine_,
1872, 6; F. L. Dingley, "European Emigration," _Special
Consular Reports_, II, No. 2, 1890, 260.
[221] _Annual Report of the Board of Immigration of Wisconsin_, 1880,
4. A writer in the _Milwaukee Sentinel_, Sept. 10, 1889, states,
"Many of them (Germans and Scandinavians) bring abundant means
to secure large farms and stock them well."
Whatever may be gained in this way is, however, offset by the steady
stream of remittances flowing from America to Northern Europe,
especially during the last quarter of a century, and by the large sums
spent by the thousands of erstwhile immigrants returning to their old
homes for a winter or for a vacation.[222] Many a son, prospering in
America, has contributed regularly to the support or added comfort of
his parents or family in the fatherland; every holiday season swells the
mail sacks with letters containing money-orders and drafts. During 1902
at least $1,000,000 was sent to Norway alone.[223] In the last two
months of 1903, it is estimated that $3,000,000 went from the United
States to the Scandinavian countries in these personal remittances.[224]
Another sort of remittance which does not immediately take the form of
cash, is the prepaid ticket for passage to an American port, sent to
friends and relatives to assist them to emigrate. The United States
consuls at Bergen and Gothenburg reported that about one-half of the
emigrants from Norway and Sweden in 1891 made the journey on tickets
sent from America.[225] In this connection, it should be noted that the
money thus spent by immigrants is not in the nature of a permanent
investment of hoarded earnings; it is not the remittance of "birds of
passage" like some Italians, for example, who will shortly follow it. In
comparison with the millions of dollars sent home by Italian immigrants
in an average year, the Scandinavian remittances and spendings are
almost insignificant.[226]
[222] Brace, _The Norsefolk_, 146; _Harper's Weekly_, Sept. 1, 1888;
_Gamla och Nya Hemlandet_, Jan. 14, 1903 (Malmö correspondent).
[223] _Special Consular Reports_, XXX, 116 (1903, Christiania).
[224] _Amerika_, Jan. 8, 1904.
[225] _Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, etc._, 1892, 45, 50,
65.
[226] "In an average year the Italian bankers of New York City alone
sent to Italy from $25,000,000 to $30,000,000. This is said
to have an appreciative effect upon the money market."
_Lippincott's Magazine_, LVIII, 234 (1896).
From the first, great numbers of the immigrants have come with no other
capital than strong and willing hands, stout hearts, and an unchanging
land-hunger. They served for a time as laborers on the older farms, in
town, in the lumber camps, or in railroad construction, saving their
money, learning American ways, and acquiring some English, but as soon
as money enough was saved, perhaps in a year, to buy forty or eighty
acres of government land at the minimum price, a yoke of oxen or a team
of horses, and a few necessary farm tools and implements, the
prospective farmer moved upon new land and started out for himself.
Under the Homestead Act of 1862 the amount of capital required for the
beginning of operations was greatly reduced, and it was under this act
that the lands of the northwestern States beyond the Mississippi were so
rapidly taken up.[227]
[227] "An Act to secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public
Domain," _U. S. Statutes at Large_, 1861-2, 392.
A typical illustration of the process described is found in Levor
Timanson, who came with his father in 1848, at the age of eighteen, to
Rock County, Wisconsin, where he worked for several years as farm
laborer, carpenter, and mason. He visited Iowa and Minnesota in 1853 in
search of satisfactory land; finding it at Spring Grove, in the latter
State, he settled down there as a grain and stock farmer. In 1882 he
owned 840 acres of land of which 550 acres were under cultivation.[228]
A study of the histories of counties and townships in eastern Iowa and
Minnesota, and of the biographies which usually accompany them, reveals
clearly the fact that the larger part of the Scandinavian farmers
resident in those counties in the sixties and seventies spent from one
to five years in Wisconsin or Illinois before moving into the Farther
West.[229] They were in turn apprentices and journeymen, and finally
attained to the full dignity of masters of their own estates.
[228] _History of Houston County, Minnesota_, 481.
[229] _History of Goodhue County, Minnesota_; _History of Houston
County, Minnesota_; Sparks, _History of Winneshiek County,
Iowa_. See the numerous biographies in Nelson, _History of
the Scandinavians_, I, II.
The economic as well as the social importance of the tendency of the
Scandinavian immigrants to settle upon the unoccupied farm lands of the
West, can scarcely be over-emphasized. It gains still more striking
significance when the figures showing such settlement are compared with
those of some other races which have more recently contributed largely
to the immigrant population; for the man who owns and develops a farm
necessarily makes a permanent, long-time investment of himself and his
family in a reproductively extractive industry; while the wage-earner in
the mines or in lumbering is quite likely to be a "bird of passage,"
engaged in destructively extractive industries, with only vague notions
of, or longings for, citizenship and its responsibilities. Professor
John R. Commons, perhaps the best statistical authority on this subject,
gives some striking figures illustrative of the farm-ward tendencies of
different alien elements, showing the percentage of total number of
males in 1890 engaged (1) on farms, (2) as farmers and planters, and (3)
as laborers not specified:[230]
(1) (2) (3)
Farm Labor Farmers Laborers
Danes 40.78 27.41 13.30
Swedes and Norwegians 38.26 27.12 14.95
Germans 27.04 21.14 11.58
English 18.53 14.82 7.47
Irish 14.71 11.60 25.16
Russians 13.19 11.03 10.96
Italians 5.81 3.91 34.15
Hungarians 3.92 2.13 32.44
From calculations based upon the reports of the censuses of 1870, 1880,
and 1890, it appears that one out of four of the Scandinavians was in
the last year engaged in agriculture; of the Americans, one out of five;
of the Germans, one out of six; and of the Irish, one out of
twelve.[231]
[230] _Report of the Industrial Commission_, XV, 301-302. Mr. R. C.
Jones, assistant superintendent of Castle Garden, New York,
estimated, according to an interview in the _Milwaukee
Sentinel_, Dec. 30, 1888, that about one Swede out of a
hundred went to a city.
[231] See Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 246.
One of the very natural consequences of the tendency of the Norse
immigrants to seek agricultural locations, and to seek them along the
advancing frontier, is the township and even the county, particularly in
Minnesota and the Dakotas,[232] peopled almost solidly with the men and
women of one nationality. The names of post-offices and townships, and
the assessment rolls of the counties, bear witness to the density of
these settlements which were made up of immigrants in both the first and
second stages, composed in part of people coming from the older colonies
like those in Dane County, Wisconsin, or Henry County, Illinois, or
Goodhue County, Minnesota, and in part of newcomers direct from their
Old World homes. About 1880, the names of those whose land abutted upon
the two railroads traversing Houston County, Minnesota showed plainly
this process of massing. Taken in order, the first twenty-two names were
those of American, Irish, and German settlers; then followed nineteen,
all Scandinavian save two.[233] Fillmore County, Minnesota, one of the
older counties, largely Norwegian from its beginning, and Chisago
County, on the eastern border of the same State, a stronghold of the
Swedes from its first settlement, are excellent examples of the economic
contributions made to the State by the Scandinavian element through its
development of the wilderness into cultivated fields and prosperous
villages. Of the transformation of Dakota before 1890, and the part of
the sons of the North in it, a writer says: "Most of them came with just
enough to get on Government land and build a shack.... Now they are
loaning money to their less fortunate neighbors.... Every county has
Norwegians who are worth from $25,000 to $50,000, all made since
settling in Dakota."[234]
[232] _History of the Upper Mississippi Valley_, 281, 312, 416, 440,
511; _History of Fillmore County, Minnesota_, 344, 346;
_Northwest Magazine_, Oct., 1899.
[233] _History of Houston County, Minnesota_, 286.
[234] _The Northwest Magazine_, Oct., 1889, p. 32.
In comparing statistics of such counties as Fillmore and Chisago,
showing their growth in wealth and productivity, as reported in the
decennial census, two facts regarding the nativity and parentage of the
population must be kept clearly in mind if the full significance of the
work of the men of alien stock is to be appreciated: first, that the
increase of the foreign born is largely made up of adults; second, that
the increase of the native-born is in reality an increase of the purely
Norwegian or Swedish element, the sons and daughters, grandsons and
granddaughters of foreign-born parents, for the census-taker, even in
1900, did not penetrate beyond the first degree of ancestry.
The tabulation given in Appendix II illustrates the economic progress of
three Minnesota counties in which the Norse factor has been strong from
the early days of their settlement: Fillmore, Chisago, and Otter Tail,
one of the newer counties in the west-central part of the State. From
these figures some conception of the influence of the North European in
one American commonwealth may be obtained. These are not unique cases,
but rather they are what might be called normal counties of their class,
counties whose population is made up more or less of good native-born
settlers from the older Eastern States.
Several processes already discussed will be easily and forcibly
illustrated by these tables. In Fillmore County, for example, the oldest
of the three, the increase of the foreign-born element was most rapid in
the decade 1870-1880, while during the next ten years there was a
distinct falling off, due beyond any doubt to the rise in the price of
lands in that county and to the opening up of new counties like Otter
Tail where just as good land was to be had at the minimum rate. This
falling off was paralleled in the same decade in Chisago County, while
both the rise and decline in the number of foreign-born Norwegians
going into Otter Tail County occur in the two later decades, 1880-1890
and 1890-1900, when the Dakotas were filling up.
The continuing additions to the acreage of farm lands and the steady
transformation of unimproved areas into improved areas, indicate the
extent to which the labor of alien hands was enhancing the value of the
prairies even down to 1900, and presumably since that date. The figures
for the increase of the cash values of the farms, including fences,
etc., but not improvements, have been chosen because the increases in
the total valuations of counties is not infrequently due to the rise of
considerable villages and cities, and to the building of railroads, and
to these enterprises in contrast with the evolution of agricultural
values, the Scandinavian is a comparatively insignificant contributor.
The extent to which this development of rural areas may go, is curiously
evidenced in the names of the subdivisions of the relatively new Otter
Tail County. Of its sixty-two townships in 1900, not less than thirteen
bear unmistakable Scandinavian (Norwegian) names--Aastad, Aurdal,
Norwegian Grove, St. Olaf, Tordenskjold, Throndhjem, etc.
The price which the immigrant-agriculturist was willing to pay for his
coveted free-hold farm was not measured in dollars and cents alone. In a
very real way, the land was to become the property of the highest
bidder, tho each one paid $1.25 per acre; the land was sure to go to
him who would in the long run put the most of himself into the
bargain--muscle, courage, patience, pride in his family, and the future
of himself and his family as over against the present. It was due in no
small degree to the composite nature of this individual investment by
the man from Europe's Northwest, that he so promptly and intelligently
succeeded in acquiring free of debt his farm and home in the American
Northwest.[235]
[235] See the testimony of John Anderson, editor of _Daily
Skandinaven_, before the Select (Congressional) Committee
on Immigration and Naturalization, 1891. _House Reports,
No. 3472_, 51 Cong. 2 Sess., 679-683.
Another reason for his nearly uniform success lies in the fact that he
was brought up to a more careful and intensive system of farming than
his average American neighbor. Perhaps, too, he works harder than the
American, but hard work, long and unflinchingly continued, is a
fundamental condition of the success of a farmer whatever his
nationality. From the Scandinavian immigrant's point of view, he does
not work so hard in the United States, in order to gain a given
result,--ownership of his own farm, for illustration,--as he would have
had to work in the land of his birth. Personal interviews with scores of
men in various parts of the Northwest confirm the opinion expressed to
Miss Bremer in Wisconsin so far back as 1850, when pioneering was as
hard as at any time since the "Sloop Folk" landed in New York: "About
seven hundred Norwegian colonists are settled in this neighborhood, all
upon small farms.... I asked many, both men and women, whether they were
contented; whether they were better off here or in old Norway. Nearly
all of them replied, '_Yes_, we are better off here; we do not work so
hard, and it is easier to gain a livelihood.'"[236]
[236] Bremer, _Homes of the New World_, I, 242.
In a discussion of the competition of the immigrants with American
laborers, an eminent scholar maintains that the Scandinavians of the
West have succeeded where the American with a better start has
failed.[237] He questions if this success is a survival of the fittest,
if it has not been purchased at the expense of American labor which is
forced elsewhere, because the Americans will not endure the hard work
and live on the coarse fare, through which the immigrants win their
success.[238] However true this might be as a generalization about
immigrants as a whole, it can hardly be true of the Swedes and
Norwegians, except in so far as they have been more willing than the
native American to live the life of a pioneer and to stick to the soil.
But this cannot fairly be called forcing out American labor, or driving
the American to the wall; immigrant labor went in where there was no
labor of any kind. Furthermore, up to 1890, there was certainly plenty
of land for all the American, or native-born, laborers who desired to
devote themselves to that sort of work by which the Scandinavians were
gaining their independence. If the agricultural land of the vast West be
looked upon as a national asset, to be held for cautious and
discriminating distribution to examined and approved settlers, then it
may be that the foreigner has occupied land which might have sometime
fallen to a better man.
[237] Mayo-Smith, _Emigration and Immigration_, 146.
[238] _Ibid._, quoting a letter from Fargo, Dakota, July 24, 1887, to
the _New York Times_.
The standard of living among the Scandinavian settlers, whether on the
frontier or in the towns, has not been very different from that of their
American neighbors. It cannot vary much in a sod-house on the prairie,
in a cabin on a claim, or in a log-hut in a clearing, whether the
occupant be of Viking or Puritan descent.[239] The food was Indian corn,
sometimes ground in a coffee-mill, occasionally wheat, milk, fish, wild
fowl, pork, and common vegetables; the clothing was often primitive and
always rough, and in the early days, at least, "men in wooden shoes and
home-made woolen jackets were no uncommon sights at their religious
meetings, or even when they were locked in holy matrimony before the
altar."[240] But with prosperity, Americanization, and the settling up
of the region about them, they took to comforts and luxuries just as
soon as they could afford them. During the autumn of 1886 the writer
spent more than six weeks in the family of a well-to-do Danish farmer in
central Minnesota, and made frequent calls at the homes of Swedish and
American neighbors; very little perceptible difference could be observed
in the standards of living, whether judged by furniture, dress, or food.
In the gradations up to the wealthy families of the larger towns and
cities, the same statement would be true. If any modifications were to
be made, it would be that Scandinavians set a more bountiful table, and
give more attention than the Americans to festivals and celebrations.
[239] Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, ch. xi; Strömme, _Hvorledes
Halvor blev Prest_,--an excellent picture of life among the
Norwegians in Wisconsin and Minnesota; Foss, _Tobias: a Story
of the Northwest_.
[240] _Scandinavia_, I, 142.
The men of Scandinavian stock have by no means devoted themselves
exclusively to agriculture, tho it has already been shown how dominant
with them is the desire for the possession of land and the independence
which that possession brings. In business--trade, manufacturing, and
finance,--and in the professions, in all that differentiates the village
or urban community from time rural, they have, especially since 1890,
played an active part. A rising percentage of skilled laborers and of
those who had in the Old World experience with business affairs, marked
the immigration from Northern Europe after 1880. The accumulated wealth
of the earlier immigrants sought investment in the thriving towns of the
newer commonwealths of the Northwest. Villages which sprang up along
railroads, became cities with the advent of other lines; water power has
developed fast; the forests were to be turned into lumber and its
further manufactured products. The Scandinavian villages and wards of
great cities evolved their own stores, shops, factories, and banks just
as they did their churches, lodges, and other social organizations,
manned by men of ambition, ability, skill, and resourcefulness.
Both in the cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, Rockford, and Madison, and
in the more homogeneous villages of the solidly Scandinavian counties,
Norwegian and Swedish merchants and tradesmen, catering to Americans as
well as to persons of their own nationality, rapidly achieved success
and fortune. Seven years after landing, a Swedish immigrant is
reported in 1873 to have built up in Anoka, Minnesota, the largest
grocery establishment in that section, doing an annual business of
$100,000.[241] In the city of Minneapolis one of the largest department
stores west of Chicago, and probably the greatest Scandinavian business
house in the country, is that of S. E. Olson & Co., which does a yearly
business of about $2,000,000, and in the height of the season employs
more than 700 persons.[242] Scattered over the Northwest are scores of
enterprising Scandinavian individuals and firms engaged in business as
merchants, grain-dealers, contractors, etc., whose annual business
passes $100,000.[243]
[241] _History of the Upper Mississippi Valley_, 228.
[242] Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 204; Nelson, _History of the
Scandinavians_, I, 466.
[243] _Ibid._, I, 504, 467; II, 160, 164, 193, 229, 233, 248, 261;
Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 202, 203.
The manufacturing industries in which the Swedes and Norwegians play the
more active part are those closely related to agriculture and the
forest--the cutting and sawing of lumber, the manufacture of furniture,
and the manufacture of agricultural implements. By foresight and shrewd
investments in timber lands in Wisconsin and Minnesota, a certain
Norwegian immigrant accumulated nearly a million dollars; a Swedish
immigrant in like manner built up the C. A. Smith Lumber Company of
Minneapolis, one of the great manufacturers of the upper Mississippi
Valley, with works occupying seventy acres, employing upwards of 800
men, and with branch lumber yards situated in western Minnesota and in
the Dakotas.[244]
[244] S. A. Quale, a Norwegian immigrant of 1869, and C. A. Smith, a
Swedish immigrant of 1867. _The North_, May 21, 1890;
Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 191.
The manufacture of furniture is the chief occupation of the Swedes of
Rockford, Illinois, who comprise fully one-third of that city's
population of 30,000. In 1875 fifteen Swedes organized the Forest City
Furniture Company, with a capital of $50,000; ten years later, Rockford
was the second city in the country in the production of furniture, and
in 1893 there were more than twenty furniture companies with a capital
varying from $50,000 to $200,000. Nearly all of these companies were
organized on the co-operative basis, nearly all were composed of Swedes,
and nearly all were earning a clear profit of 20 per-cent and
upwards.[245] Other notable instances of successful Scandinavian
manufacturers are John A. Johnson, whose works for making agricultural
implements in Madison, Wisconsin, employed about 300 men; the great
printing and publishing house of John Anderson & Company of Chicago,
from which are issued the daily and weekly editions of "Skandinaven,"
and the Swedish-American Publishing Company of Minneapolis, publishing
the widely circulated "Svenska Amerikanska Posten."[246]
[245] Kæding, _Rockfords Svenskar_, 67, 95; _The North_, Jan. 8, 1890,
July 12, 1893.
[246] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, II, 209; Söderström,
_Minneapolis Minnen_, 181-189.
The economic progress of the immigrants from the Northlands may well be
gauged by the number of public and private banking establishments in the
Northwest controlled by them. Surprisingly numerous are the men who,
after gaining a competency as merchants, grain-dealers (one of these
built twenty-five elevators along the Great Northern Railway), land
speculators, and lumbermen, have turned to banking as their communities
developed. The market for capital was active, ready to absorb large or
small amounts; rates of interest ran from ten to twenty per cent.; the
thrift and honesty of the Norse folk were equivalent to a bond. Hence
small banks with $25,000 and $50,000 capital multiplied, not always on
the soundest basis, it should be said, though this does not imply
dishonesty. In Minneapolis, between 1874 and 1900, the names of no less
than six Scandinavian banks appear, the largest becoming the strong
Swedish American National Bank with a capital of $250,000.[247] Smaller
cities like Sioux City and Boone, Iowa, have developed similar sound
banks capitalized for $100,000. Not all Scandinavian bankers, however,
have escaped the temptations of "high finance," though the total of
failures is comparatively small. One of the most notorious and shameful
examples of bank-wrecking in recent years occurred in Chicago in 1906,
when Paul O. Stensland, for years the trusted and honored and admired
president of the Milwaukee Avenue State Bank, the depository of hundreds
of working men and small tradesmen, wrecked the bank through
speculations in real estate, fled to Africa, and was brought back and
placed in the Joliet prison for a term of fifteen years.[248]
[247] Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 206; Nelson, _History of the
Scandinavians_, II, 164, 228.
[248] The Chicago papers for August, September, and October give full
details of the wrecking of the bank and the career of its
president. See _Chicago Tribune_, August 9 ff., 1906.
As the regions into which the Scandinavian immigrants have gone so
determinedly as agricultural settlers have gradually become more complex
in their economic structure, these men and women have once more
illustrated their notable capacity to adapt themselves to the new
conditions and to share in new advantages. The second and third
generation will probably develop much the same tendency city-ward which
the Americans of the same class show so markedly; and they will take
their share of the honors and emoluments of business, manufacturing,
banking, the technical professions, and the so-called learned
professions.