THE RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL STANDPOINT
The social results of the settlement of a body of aliens in any country,
as compared with the economic, are far more undefinable and elusive,
even when the settlement is compact and homogenous, like that of the
Dutch in New York or the French in Louisiana. But when a particular
element, like the Irish or the Scandinavian, in a complex population, is
distributed over a wide area, with accessions running through
three-quarters of a century, the problem of its social influence and
importance becomes vastly more difficult. No study or observation of
such a well-established racial group, outside of the purely statistical,
at best can reach far beyond an impression or an individual opinion; it
cannot arrive at a convincing and conclusive scientific deduction.[249]
Looked at in its length and breadth, the question of social results of
Scandinavian immigration takes various forms. Have the foreign-born
citizen and his immediate descendants adapted themselves rapidly and
vitally to the best American customs in business, politics, education,
and religion? Have they learned English quickly? What has been their
attitude towards such questions as intemperance, slavery, and public
honesty? Are they re-enforcing the best standards of public and private
morality prevailing in the communities into which they come?
[249] Hall, _Immigration_, ch. viii.
Fundamental to this discussion, is the general effect of the process of
immigration and new settlement, upon the physical and intellectual state
of the immigrant and his offspring. It has already been pointed out that
the immigrants of the nineteenth century, like those hardy souls of the
sixteenth, who left England, Holland, France, or Sweden, were the more
adventurous and determined men and women of their parishes, and that the
incidents and anxieties of settling up affairs in their old homes and of
getting off for America, would stir to quicker thinking the minds of
even the slow and inert. Then came the influence of adjustment to the
ways of a new and larger world, with its greater distance, its more
rapid communication, its more strenuous activities, its new language,
and its different climate and diet; all these re-enforced the original,
quickened impulse, and of necessity affected both subtly and powerfully
the mind and body of two generations.
The change has in general been for the better, tho some observers think
they see a retrogression, especially in physical respects. A Norwegian
physician who spent about nine months in the United States in 1892,
wrote for a Christiania medical journal an article in which he declared:
"That the Norwegian race in the United States is declining physically,
every one, I think, who has spent some time among our emigrated
countrymen there must admit. But the change is a slow one." The causes,
as he saw them, were the unwholesome climate of the Northwest, the
unsuitable food of the farmers, the cold, damp houses of the prairies,
and the abuse of alcoholic liquors and tobacco. By way of final summary
of opinions, he states that "the general rule is that, these dark sides
to the contrary notwithstanding, the social conditions in America and
its democratic institutions are conducive to individual thinking thereby
contributing to the development of individual talent, great or small as
that may be."[250]
[250] Dr. E. Kraft, "The Physical Degeneration of the Norwegian Race
in North America," _The North_, Jan. 3, 1893,--translation from
_Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskaben_; Ch. Gronvald, "The Effects
of the Immigration on the Norwegian Immigrants," appendix
to the _Sixth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of
Minnesota_, (1878), II, 507-534.
The views of Dr. Kraft were more or less disputed by several Norwegian
physicians in the United States, in _The North_ for January and
February, 1893. Dr. Harold Graff, writing to the periodical in which Dr.
Kraft's article originally appeared, says: "With astonishing rapidity,
the wide mouth and ungainly nose of the specific Norwegian peasant type
become modified and disappear, the difference between the physiognomy
and facial expression of parents and children being often bewilderingly
great.... I have interviewed some of the oldest and most experienced
physicians practising in this country, and also other intelligent
Norwegians who have travelled among their countrymen in the States,
without as yet having heard any divergent opinion whatever. All agree
that the Norwegian race in every respect is progressing in both mind and
body."[251] Others, who were not so sure of the physical improvement,
agree as to the intellectual quickening. In a word, if the transplanting
of the tree has not certainly produced an improved trunk or foliage, it
has bettered the quality of the fruit. The next logical step is to
attempt to estimate the value of such fruit in the American market.
[251] _The North_, Jan. 18, 1893, translating the article mentioned.
The two obvious ways of determining the influence of a foreign element,
are to compare it with some other foreign-born constituent longer and
better known, and to compare it with the native American. The latter is
the fairer criterion, but it is not easy to ascertain and define what
are the purely American characteristics with which comparison is to be
made. Statistics on social matters are so incomplete that reliance must
be placed upon the consensus of opinion of thoughtful, sympathetic
observers and students of American life, whether they be statesmen and
philosophers bred in the United States, or scholarly, penetrating
foreigners like James Bryce and Alexander de Toqueville.[252] Such men
of insight agree that the American ideal comprises love of freedom,
independence, and equality; respect for law, government, education, and
social morality (including reverence for the family and the home); and
lastly a willingness to share the common burden and, if need be, to make
a common sacrifice for the permanent welfare of the commonwealth.
[252] Bryce, _American Commonwealth_ (3rd ed.), ch. lxxx; Matthews,
_American Character_, 20-34; Roosevelt, _American Ideals_, ch.
i, ii.
In acquiring the use of English and in maintaining high standards of
education, the Scandinavians have an unimpeachable record which no other
foreign, non-English-speaking element can equal. Illiteracy in Norway
and Sweden is almost unknown. Taken together, these two kingdoms have
less than one per-cent of illiteracy, and among the recruits in Sweden
in 1896 only .13% were unlettered, and only .63% were unable to
write.[253] Personal acquaintance with many hundreds of Scandinavians,
on both sides of the Atlantic, has failed to reveal to the writer a
single adult who was unable to read and write.
[253] _Statesman's Year Book, 1900_, 1049; Kiddle & Schem, _Dictionary
of Education_, 452. In the latter work, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
and Switzerland are marked with asterisks, signifying that they
are practically without illiteracy. The contrast of these
figures with the percentages of illiteracy of some other
European countries is very striking. In 1890 the percentage of
illiterates in Austria was 40%, in Hungary, 54%, in Italy, in
1897, among conscripts, 37.3% (reduced from 56.7% in 1871), and
among those persons marrying, males, 32.9%, females, 52.13%
(reduced respectively from 37.73% and 76.73% in 1871). For
Russia the percentage is probably about 80%, perhaps as high as
90%. See _Statesman's Year Book, 1900_, 374-375, 392, 744-745.
Statistical returns relating to German army recruits indicate
that in 1896-7 only about .11% could neither read nor write.
_Ibid._, 592. See also, Hall, _Immigration_, 46, 48, 54, 61,
141.
One of the very first matters to receive attention in a Scandinavian
settlement in the United States, has been the establishment of a school,
and, as speedily as possible, the instruction has been given in English,
partly because the school laws of most of the States would not recognize
a public school conducted in a foreign language, and partly because the
settlers desired to have the children know English.[254] For a year or
two in some of the isolated communities, as in Arendahl, Fillmore
County, Minnesota, in 1857-8, it was necessary to conduct the schools in
Swedish or Norwegian; but only rarely has any attempt been made
to continue systematic, regular instruction exclusively in the
mother-tongue by the maintenance of year-long parish schools. The
immigrants have frequently been insistent, and properly so, upon some
scheme by which they might be able to educate their children in the use
of the mother-tongue; but schools for this purpose have usually
supplemented rather than supplanted the ordinary public school.[255] In
a very few localities, like the older settlements in Goodhue County and
Fillmore County, Minnesota, Allamakee County, Iowa, and Dane County,
Wisconsin, parish schools are still maintained throughout the year.[256]
[254] _History of Fillmore County, Minnesota_, 346, 463,--a Norwegian
school for one year in a private house, then an English school;
Sparks, _History of Winneshiek County, Iowa_, 16-17.
[255] For a discussion of the Bennett Law in Wisconsin, see pp.
167 ff.
[256] _Beretning om det syttende Aarsmöde for den Forenede norsk
lutherske Kirke i Amerika_, 1906,--"Parochialraporter for
Aaret 1905."
The church schools are more commonly a sort of summer vacation school
supported either by the persons whose children attend, or at the expense
of the whole congregation; in them are taught the language of the
parents and the preacher, the church catechism, and something of church
history; sometimes especial attention, as in the case of the Danish
Grundtvigian "high schools," is given to keeping alive the traditions of
the European kingdom from which sprang the immigrants. The teacher of
both the language and the doctrines of religion is customarily a student
in some theological seminary of the denomination to which the
congregation belongs. The Lutherans have kept up these vacation schools
more consistently than any other Scandinavian church. The report of the
parochial schools of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church for 1905
showed that on the average almost thirty days were devoted to the church
school in each of the 750 congregations reporting.[257]
[257] "Sammendrag af Parochialraporter", _Beretning om det syttende
Aarsmöde for den Forenede norsk lutherske Kirke i Amerika_,
1906, LVI; J. J. Skordalsvold, in Nelson, _History of the
Scandinavians_, I, 241.
The clergy are mainly active in this mild paternalism, upon which the
younger people not infrequently look with disfavor, for to the second
generation it appears an unnecessary perpetuation of an un-American
custom, a scheme for emphasizing peculiarities and differences rather
than a means of hastening the process of amalgamation. Sometimes the
younger men have revolted and broken entirely with the Lutheran church,
identifying themselves with American congregations, or drifting out on
the wide sea of religious indifference.
The loyalty of the Scandinavians to the public school system has been of
far-reaching consequence to the immigrants themselves as well as to
American society. There is always a more or less strongly marked
tendency among aliens speaking a foreign language to congregate in
groups in the country or in certain wards in large towns and cities, and
out of this tendency springs a sort of clannishness which cannot be
avoided and which is not peculiar to any class, for the immigrants
naturally follow the lines of least resistance. They go to those whom
they know, to those whose speech they can understand, to those from
whose experience they may draw large drafts of suggestion and help. But
this clannishness with the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, has been but a
stage in their evolution out of which, through the gates of the English
language, public schools, naturalization, and increased prosperity, they
have passed to broader relations. The filling up of the Scandinavian
quarters of great cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, may
modify the effect of their persistent attachment to the public school;
but so far the public school is the great foe to clannishness, and
loyalty to it one of the best evidences of the desire of these people
from the Northern lands to become Americanized. In the cities of
Minneapolis and St. Paul, with their large Scandinavian population,
there was not in 1907 a single parish in which the parochial school
lasted through the year, and only a few in which vacation schools were
maintained.
In higher education the Scandinavians have allowed their denominational
zeal to outrun their judgment. They have founded numerous seminaries and
so-called colleges, but almost invariably as a part of the necessary
equipment of a religious denomination, for how could a self-respecting
sect, no matter how young or how slightly differentiated from its older
brethren, permit its children to attend the schools of those whose
denominational beliefs or practices had become objectionable enough to
warrant a schism in the church? A few of these institutions, like Luther
College, at Decorah, Iowa, Gustavus Adolphus College at St. Peter,
Minnesota, Augustana College at Rock Island, Illinois, and Bethany
College at Lindsborg, Kansas, have maintained an excellent standard of
work and exercise a wide and beneficent influence.[258] The great
majority, however, have simply wasted resources by the multiplication of
ambitious, struggling, poorly-equipped, so-called colleges, with little
or no endowment, and often dependent upon the congregations of the
denomination which gave them birth.[259]
[258] See catalogs of these institutions.
[259] Several of the Norwegian and Swedish weekly papers supported by
the different denominations publish regularly lists of donors to
particular schools, stating the amount of money, or the nature
of the articles given, enumerating the books, quantities of
fuel, clothing, etc.
One of the results of the excessive splitting-up of the Scandinavian
churches is that the energies which ought to be concentrated are
frittered away on unnecessary schools. A separate denominational school
and a family paper seem to be indispensable parts of the machinery of
every newly organized sect, no matter how young or how small or how poor
it may be.[260] The number of these institutions continually varies with
the ups and downs of the denominations trying to support them. In 1893,
Mr. J. J. Skordalsvold, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, put
the number of Scandinavian colleges, schools, and seminaries in the
United States at thirty-six, with an attendance of about five
thousand.[261] Sixteen of these, with an attendance of twenty-five
hundred, one-half of the total, were located in Minnesota. By 1900 the
sixteen had grown to twenty schools, having property worth $500,000, one
hundred and sixty teachers, and three thousand students.[262] In that
state, however, and in others like North Dakota, these schools are
likely to follow the same course as many of the schools of other
pioneering Protestant denominations, and become little more than
preparatory schools on the one hand, or theological seminaries on the
other, leaving to the State university the maintenance of higher
education in every field save arts and theology. Even as secondary
schools, not many of them will be likely to survive the third generation
of the original immigrants, unless they are much better endowed than any
one of them is at the present time.[263] The Red Wing Seminary (Hauge
Synod) of Red Wing, Minnesota, founded in 1878, is essentially an
ordinary private secondary school with a theological course attached,
and three-fourths of its work is conducted in English.[264] Bethany
College at Lindsborg, Kansas, one of the three prosperous Swedish
colleges, and perhaps the most ambitious, is substantially an
English-speaking college, with nine departments of instruction, and in
1912 a registration of 919. Only in the classes in Swedish language and
literature is the instruction given in Swedish, tho "Swedish is required
of all students preparing to enter the ministerial work of our Swedish
Evangelical Lutheran Church."[265] Luther College, the Norwegian
institution at Decorah, Iowa, has followed along the same course only
not quite so far. Several years ago the proportion between English and
Norwegian as media of instruction was slightly in favor of the English
in the college classes; in the classes in the preparatory department,
in the literary societies, and in the conversation of the students,
English was decidedly predominant.[266] The practice of this, the
oldest, and in some respects the soundest and most influential, of the
Scandinavian colleges, is sure to be adopted by the lesser schools which
survive their adolescence.
[260] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 20-24,--an excellent
account of some of these attempts.
[261] (Transcriber's Note: This footnote does not exist in the
original work.)
[262] Nelson, _Scandinavians in the United States_ (2nd ed.), 317 ff.
[263] _The World Almanac and Encyclopedia_, 1914, 599-609.
Instructors Students Prod. Fds. Income
Augsburg Seminary 8 173 40,000 20,000
Augustana College 31 629 414,356 101,923
Bethany College (Kan.) 44 893 55,777 93,166
Gustavus Adolphus College 23 348 75,000 35,328
Luther College 16 213 272,408 37,000
St. Olaf College 32 550 250,000 74,000
[264] Interview with Professor G. O. Brohough, August, 1906. See
Nelson, _Scandinavians in the United States_, I, 179-180.
[265] _Catalogue of Bethany College, 31st Academic Year_ (1912), 54.
[266] A. Estrem, "A Norwegian-American College," _Midland Monthly_, I,
605-611.
From a religious standpoint, the most noteworthy characteristic of
Scandinavians wherever found, is their intense Protestantism. Everywhere
and always they are uncompromising enemies of the Roman Catholic church,
and there are barely enough Catholics among them in Europe and in the
United States to prove that it is possible to convert one of them to
that faith. In fact, their dislike of Catholicism is an instinct coming
down from Reformation times rather than a matter of experience or
close-at-hand observation; but so strong is this feeling that it colors,
consciously or unconsciously, their relations in politics and society in
the United States. Their distrust of the Irish is at bottom more a
religious than a racial instinct, even when it takes an active form.
While this dislike and suspicion are still real and large, it has
undoubtedly been reduced by the breaking-up of the old rigid lines of
Lutheranism, which has taken place in the last two decades in the United
States.
Each of the three peninsular kingdoms of Northern Europe has an
established Lutheran church, administered by bishops, which holds still
the great majority of the people. Toleration has been generally
practiced for a half century, the sole exception being the ban against
Jesuits in Norway.[267] Of all the Protestant churches, none is more
rigidly orthodox than the Lutheran, none is more unwilling to admit
changes in its traditional creed; only a few years ago, the Norwegian
Synod in America re-affirmed its belief in the literal inspiration of
the Bible. Yet in spite of this conservatism, the Lutherans settled in
the United States have invariably rejected the episcopal form of
government, and have organized upon a more or less democratic basis. No
matter how loyal they were to the Establishment in the Old World, a
bishop has not appeared to be necessary to their happiness or salvation
in the New. The Lutheran Church proper has kept within its folds a much
larger percentage of Swedes than of Norwegians in the United States, the
characteristic independence of the latter leading many of them even
farther than mere separation from the mother-church. The persistence of
the centrifugal force of dissent shows itself again and again in the
violent polemics and divisions which have marked the course of Norwegian
church history in America.[268] While this divisiveness may in some
degree be due to the fashion set by the early settlers of whom many were
dissenters, probably the deeper cause is to be found in the general
freedom from religious restriction and prescription which characterizes
the whole United States and especially the West.
[267] _The Statesman's Year Book, 1900_, 491, 1048, 1062.
[268] Gjerset, "_The United Norwegian Lutheran Church_," in Nelson,
_History of the Scandinavians_, I, 229-242.
Even the more extreme sects, in regard to belief and practice, have been
recruited from among the Scandinavians both before and since their
coming to this country. The Mormons were early at work as missionaries
in Northern Europe and, as has been stated above, won many converts,
particularly in Denmark, from whose immigration Utah mainly profited. In
1900 Utah had a total foreign-born population of 53,777, of whom 9132
were Danes; 7025, Swedes; and 2128, Norwegians. The real result of the
missionary work, however, is better seen in the figures for persons
having both parents born in a specified country and residing in Utah in
1900: Danes, 18,963; Swedes, 12,047; Norwegians, 3,466; total,
34,476.[269]
[269] _Twelfth Census, 1900_, _Population_, Pt. I, Tables 33 and 39;
H. H. Bancroft, _Utah_, 441, 431; Montgomery, _The Work Among
the Scandinavians_, 8. Mr. Montgomery, the superintendent of
Minnesota for the American Home Missionary Society (1886),
laments the fact that very large numbers of the Scandinavians
"have become converts to Mormonism, and have 'gathered' to
Utah," and adds further: "I have before me the official
statistics of the Mormon church (not easily obtained) giving a
report of their missionary work in Scandinavia for each year
from 1851 to 1881. They report that their converts in these
lands during these thirty-one years reached the enormous total
of 132,766 persons, and that of these 21,000 emigrated to Utah."
From a beginning of four elders of the Mormon church at work in
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in 1850, the force increased to
sixty-one missionaries at work in 1881.
The American churches and missionary societies were not unmindful of the
needs of the Scandinavians scattered over the Middle West in the early
days of its development, and in zealous and effective fashion gave them
aid. The work of the Hedström brothers in New York and in the West,
already described, reflects credit on the Methodist Church. Once at
least, help came to them from an unexpected source: Jenny Lind, the
"Swedish Nightingale," devoted to charity the proceeds of a concert in
New York, in November, 1850, and among the items of the distribution of
the total of $5073.20 by a committee, is "To the Relief of the Poor
Swedes and Norwegians in the city of New York per the Rev. Mr. Hedström,
$273.20. To the distribution of Swedish Bibles and Testaments, in New
York."[270] Besides the Bethel Ship in New York Harbor (1845), this same
church established a Scandinavian mission in the Rock River Conference,
in Illinois, in 1849, and two others in Iowa and Wisconsin in 1850.
Three years later the report showed two Swedish missions with four
missionaries, and two Norwegian missions with four missionaries.[271]
[270] Rosenberg, _Jenny Lind in America_, 79.
[271] Simpson, _Cyclopedia of Methodism_, 785.
The American Lutheran churches undertook to aid their co-religionists,
and in 1850 the Pittsburg Synod and the Joint Synod of Ohio each sent
one of its ministers into the Northwest, but the epidemic of cholera
caused them to hurry back to their former homes.[272] The real support
of some of the immigrant Lutheran missionaries came from the American
Home Missionary Society (Congregational). One of the men thus assisted
was Paul Anderson (Norland) who came from Norway in 1843, and received
a part of his education in the new Congregational college at Beloit. He
was chosen pastor of the first Norwegian Lutheran Church in Chicago in
1848, and journeyed to Albany, New York, to be ordained by a Lutheran
minister, but he nevertheless served under a commission from the
Congregational Society, and made reports to it for several years.[273]
[272] _The North_, Aug. 30, 1893, quoting from _The Workman_.
[273] Jensson, _American Lutheran Biographies_, 25 ff; _The Home
Missionary_, XXII, 263, 264; XXIII, 119. In Anderson's report
for 1850 is an account of a visit to Dane County, Wisconsin,
where 'one of the Formalists,' after five years of labor had
failed to bring much enlightenment. "There are some four
thousand or more Norwegians in one settlement, about
three-quarters of whom are members of this man's church, and the
rest are sheep without a shepherd. They had had preaching there
for the last five years, but such gross immorality I had never
witnessed before.... We have no reasonable ground to hope that a
single individual of those three thousand souls is converted to
God; for all are intemperate and profane.... Of all I saw (and I
saw a great many) two out of three were intoxicated, or had been
drinking so that it was offensive to come within the sphere
poisoned by their breath; and of every two I heard talking
together one or both profaned their Maker."
In a similar manner this Society supported for several years the
missionary labors of Lars Paul Esbjörn, a graduate of Upsala University,
who was ordained a Lutheran clergyman when he emigrated in 1849, and
likewise the labors of T. N. Hasselquist. Esbjörn was appointed a
missionary of the Society in December, 1849, on the recommendation of
the Central Association of Congregational Ministers of Illinois, to whom
he presented his credentials and by whom he was examined and received
into the Association.[274] He was re-appointed year by year, making
reports from 1851 to 1854.[275] Hasselquist makes acknowledgment of his
obligations to the Society in a letter of July, 1853, saying that he
rejoices "in connection with your in the highest sense benevolent
Society, without which it would have been impossible for me to do for my
scattered countrymen what I have done.... I give humble thanks to the
Home Missionary Association which out of Christian benevolence helps to
build up the Kingdom of Christ among scattered Swedes who are almost all
very poor, but still love the word of God."[276] In 1852 the Society
appointed the Rev. Ole Anderson [Andrewson?] to the charge of the
Scandinavian church in Racine, Wisconsin, and two years later he reports
to the Society from La Salle County, Illinois.[277]
[274] _The Home Missionary_, XXIII, 250, 263.
[275] _Ibid._, XXIV, 238; XXIV, 287.
[276] _The Home Missionary_, XXVI, 73.
[277] _Ibid._, XXV, 77; XXVI, 268.
Since the Civil War and the great increase in the numbers of immigrants,
the home missionary efforts of the Methodists, Congregationalists, and
Baptists have been carried on with persistence, if not always with
perfect wisdom. In 1911 the Methodists had five Swedish Conferences with
222 churches, a membership of about 18,000, and property valued at
upwards of $2,000,000, and two Norwegian-Danish Conferences, with 119
churches, 6,300 members, and property worth $400,000.[278] The cost of
this work to the Methodist Missionary Society is not far from $50,000
per year.[279] The Baptists began their proselyting work in Norway and
Sweden, and have prosecuted it steadily in the Northwest since the
establishment of the first Swedish Baptist church in Rock Island,
Illinois, in 1852. In 1912 the church reports showed 18 Swedish
conferences, 374 churches, 28,000 members, and current income of
about $350,000, and also eleven Norwegian-Danish conferences, 94
churches, 5,900 members, and current income of $65,500.[280] The
Congregationalists have pushed their denominational interests in like
manner, and in 1913 had about one hundred churches, with rather more
than six thousand members.[281] Besides these churches regularly
connected with the Congregational organization, there are about one
hundred congregations of the Swedish Mission Union, and the group of
independent congregations whose faith and practice are closely allied
with those of the Congregationalists.[282] The Unitarian church has
endeavored to organize congregations, spending $25,000 on one church in
Minneapolis in sixteen years.[283] A few Protestant Episcopal parishes
also exist among the Swedes, chiefly in the large cities.[284]
[278] Liljegren, "Historical Review of Scandinavian Methodist in the
United States," in Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I,
208; _The Methodist Year Book_, 1912, 42-45.
[279] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 337; _The Methodist
Year Book_, 1912, 90-92.
[280] Newman, _A Century of Baptist Achievement_, 126; Nelson (and
Peterson), _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 202; _Annual of
the Northern Baptist Convention_, 1913, 189.
[281] _Congregational Year Book_, 1914. Cf. Nelson, _Scandinavians
in the United States_, I, 346; Montgomery, _Work among the
Scandinavians_ (1888), and a _"Wind from the Holy Spirit" in
Norway and Sweden_, 7-8, 109-112.
[282] Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 231-236.
[283] _Cosmopolitan_, Oct., 1890; Nelson, _Scandinavians in the United
States_, I, 337; Söderstsröm, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 249-250.
[284] Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 237-241.
The three denominations first mentioned have for many years maintained,
in their respective western theological seminaries, departments or
professorships for the education of young men for ministerial service
among the immigrants from the Northlands. At the Chicago Theological
Seminary (Congregationalist) the Dano-Norwegian department was organized
in 1884, with one professor and two students; in the following year a
Swedish department was added, the professor being chosen from the
Swedish Free Mission Church. In 1906 these two departments had each two
professors and respectively thirteen and twenty-seven students, and
published a religious paper, _Evangelisten_.[285] Besides the Garrett
Biblical Institute (Methodist), Northwestern University has two similar
departments, with thirty-one students in the Swedish, and sixteen in the
Norwegian-Danish section.[286] In the Divinity School of the University
of Chicago (Baptist), the same departments appeared up to 1912; in 1897
there were twenty-two students in the Dano-Norwegian Department, and
thirty-five in the Swedish; for 1905, the corresponding figures were
twenty-four students, with one professor and two instructors, and
thirty-four students, with two professors and one instructor. Both
departments were dropped after 1913.[287]
[285] _Year book of the Chicago Theological Seminary_, 1906;
Montgomery, _The Work Among the Scandinavians_ (1888), 9-12, 22.
[286] _Catalogue of the Northwestern University_, 1913-1914, 379-380,
478.
[287] _Annual Register of the University of Chicago_, 1904-5;
1912-1913, 311.
So far as the movements represented by these missionary endeavors and by
the organization of schools help to furnish church privileges to those
beyond the reach of other Protestant churches--since the Catholics are
out of the question--they are admirable, accomplishing much good. But
when they cease to be efforts to extend religious opportunities, when
they are mainly devoted to swinging men and women already Christian from
one denomination to another, they simply add one more factor to the
inexcusable competition which too often characterizes the home
missionary activity, even when it does not degenerate into a mere
scramble for denominational advantage. The results in very many cases
have been sadly disproportionate to the expenditures.[288]
[288] Nelson (and Skordalsvold), "Historical Review of the
Scandinavian Churches in Minnesota," _History of the
Scandinavians_, I, 335-349.
Not all the forces, however, have been centrifugal; the divided body of
Lutherans has attempted, with varying success, to effect permanent
union. Since 1890 the centripetal reaction has been strong, gaining
impetus from the highly significant efforts of the branches of the
Norwegian Lutherans in a synod held in that year in Minneapolis, to
create a single organization. The United Norwegian Lutheran Church,
formed June 13, 1890, was made up of the Norwegian Augustana Synod, the
Norwegian-Danish Conference, and the Anti-Missourian Brotherhood, thus
becoming the strongest of all the American Norwegian churches, numbering
1,122 congregations, about 120,000 members, and having property valued
at more than $1,500,000.[289] But old antagonisms and animosities,
generated in the bitterness of religious controversy, were not easily
overcome, and disputes soon arose to disturb the life of the United
Church. The chief of these related to the control of certain educational
institutions, especially Augsburg Seminary (theological) in Minneapolis.
So acute was the factional quarrel that it was taken into the courts in
1893, and continued on until 1898, when the "Augsburg strife" was
settled out of court by mutual agreement. Meantime the Augsburg party
had withdrawn from the United Church, taking some 40,000 members,
keeping the Seminary, worth about $60,000, but giving up to the United
Church the endowment fund of about $40,000.[290] In spite of factions,
secessions, and the expulsion of twelve congregations, the United Church
as a whole prospered. Its annual report for 1905 gave the following
statistics: congregations, more or less closely affiliated, 1,325;
ministers and professors, 453; communicants, 267,000; property,
$715,000.[291] While the United Church was the largest, there were no
fewer than four other branches of Norwegian Lutherans in 1914.[292]
[289] _Ibid._, I, 236 ff.; Jacobs, _History of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in the United States_, 513; _Minneapolis
Tribune_, June 14, 1890.
[290] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 217-224, 263; _U. S.
Eleventh Census_, 1890, Churches, 452.
[291] _Beretning om det syttende Aarsmöde for den Forenede norsk
lutherske Kirke i Amerika_, 140 and LVI.
[292] _World Almanac and Encyclopedia, 1914_, 538-539.
In contrast with the Norwegians, the Swedes have manifested a
commendable unity in keeping the faith once delivered to them by the
fathers, the chief exception being the Swedish Evangelical Mission
Covenant, which can scarcely be called Lutheran. The great Swedish
Lutheran Augustana Synod, one of the constituent members of the General
Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, stood staunchly
united in the midst of many changes in other branches of the church.
Under the broad name of the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana
Synod of North America, which comprised both Norwegians and Swedes down
to 1870, it grew rapidly, setting its face sternly against the New
Lutheranism which sought to modify the old rigidity of doctrine and
practice. In 1894 the word Scandinavian was dropped.[293] By 1899 the
Synod represented 900 congregations, 200,000 members, and a material
estate of $4,200,000.[294]
[293] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 219.
[294] _Ibid._, I, 217; Carroll, _The Religious Forces of the United
States_ (rev. ed.), 190.
The break-up of the Lutheran church is not wholly to be regretted when
viewed in relation to the process of Americanization, for the church has
usually been a stronghold of traditionalism and conservatism. Perhaps,
too, the vigorous religious and ecclesiastical disputes, wasteful of
energy and of money as they sometimes seem, have contributed to a
wholesome and pervasive intellectual activity not altogether unlike the
results of the Puritan disputations. So careful a student of
Northwestern immigrants as Mr. O. N. Nelson is inclined to the opinion
that the contentions of the Lutherans may have benefited the church.
"Close observation has convinced us that if there had been peace instead
of war, the Norwegian Lutherans in the State (Minnesota) would have
numbered several thousand less than they do. It may not seem pious to
say so, but many a worldly-minded Viking has become so interested in the
fight that he has joined the faction with which he sympathized in order
to assist in beating the opposing party."[295]
[295] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 339.
The church services in the great majority of cases are still conducted
in the mother-tongue. In the United Norwegian Lutheran Church, in 1905,
for example, the services in Norwegian numbered 30,407 as against 1,542
in English, and out of 1,300 congregations reporting, no more than six
held services in English only, including two large congregations in
Chicago and Milwaukee.[296] Five other congregations conducted more
services in English than in Norwegian; in ten localities the numbers
were equal; and in twenty-two, they were about equal, making a total of
forty-three in which English figured prominently.[297] The Hon. N. P.
Haugen, speaking on Norway Day at the World's Columbian Exposition, in
Chicago, commented on the fact that a Lutheran church had just been
dedicated, in which English alone would be used, and said significantly:
"Twenty years ago our theologians would not have entertained such a
proposition."[298] Now the younger Lutheran preachers are expected to be
able to preach both in their mother-tongue and in English.
[296] _Beretning om det syttende Aarsmöde for den Forenede norsk
lutherske Kirke i Amerika, 1906_, XLIV.
[297] _Ibid._, II-LV.
[298] _Daily Skandinaven_, May 24, 1893.
The conduct of services in non-English languages will and should
continue so long as there is a considerable body of men and women who
emigrated too late to learn the new language well enough to stand that
final linguistic test, the power to worship genuinely and satisfyingly
in the adopted speech. This means that the churches will use the foreign
speech until the generation of the foreign-born ceases to be
predominant, and in the cities, perhaps while the second generation is
in the majority; but children who receive their education in the public
schools or other English speaking schools, will require that their
religious instruction and their devotional exercises be conducted in
English.
The children and grandchildren of the immigrants, except in certain
large and compact settlements, chiefly in the cities, prefer English,
and commonly use that language in conversation and in correspondence
with each other. In the Swedish and Norwegian wards of such cities as
Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Rockford, and in a county like
Goodhue in Minnesota, where the presence of large numbers of the
foreign-born makes the use of the foreign tongue imperative in the
homes, streets, markets, and places of business, and where the news is
read in a Scandinavian daily or weekly, the tendency to keep to the
speech of their ancestors is strong. The preacher and the politician
alike understand this, and the literature, speeches, and even the music,
in the campaigns for personal and civic righteousness are presented in
no unknown tongue, as the theological seminaries and Scandinavian
departments in other institutions, and the Swedish and Norwegian
political orators in critical years, bear abundant witness.
Co-ordinate with the school and the church, as a social force to be
estimated, is the press. Newspapers and periodicals of various sorts in
foreign languages inevitably follow the settlement of any considerable
number of aliens in a given community, for people of education and
ambition will look in a familiar medium for their news and gossip, their
instruction in commerce and politics, as well as their teaching in
religion. So the Chinese and Japanese on the Pacific Coast, no less than
the Germans, Italians, and Greeks on the Atlantic, have their dailies
and their magazines. Since the three Norse peoples, practically without
illiteracy and with active and ambitious minds, have settled in a large
number of moderate-sized communities, frequently isolated from each
other, and since their differences of opinion in matters religious and
ecclesiastical are often positive and aggressive, the number of their
publications of all kinds since the middle of the last century is
curiously large, and quite as remarkable for their migratory and
short-lived character.
The newspapers usually serve as the chief means of keeping informed
concerning the general news of the European home-lands, as well as of
the United States. Nearly all the larger papers publish regular European
correspondence, summaries of events, letters, and clippings, under such
headings as "Sverige," "Fra Norge," etc.[299]
[299] _Gamla och Nya Hemlandet_, Apr. 8, 1903.
The newspapers and magazines render another service by the publication,
on the instalment plan, either as a part of the regular columns or as
inserted sheets, of standard works of the great Scandinavian writers or
of translations of the masterpieces of English and American authors.
Since these novels, essays, and histories are so printed that they may
be folded up and form a pamphlet for preservation, the periodical
serves both as newspaper and library. "It was the Swedish-American press
which caused the Swedish literature, as it is in America, to spring
up."[300]
[300] _Gamla och Nya Hemlandet_, April 8, 1903 (translated).
The dailies of Chicago, Minneapolis, and Duluth, in particular, publish
every week scores of communications from subscribers in all parts of the
Northwest, in a department devoted to neighborhood news or gossip. The
old settler writes his reminiscences, sometimes a brief letter called
out by some event, sometimes at great length, like the Rev. J. A.
Ottesen's "Contribution to the History of our Settlements and
Congregations," which ran through eleven numbers of the weekly paper
_Amerika_, from April to September of 1894, and gave very minute details
of immigrant families unto the third and fourth generation, as they had
passed under the kindly eye of the patriarchal old pastor in his service
of forty years among them.[301] Great numbers of these communications
relate to the conditions and prospects of local settlements as viewed
from the settler's standpoint--crop conditions, market prices, wages,
opportunities for labor, nature and prices of nearby land, schools,
religion. As a revelation of the real mind of a community or of an
element of the population, showing the inducements and motives operating
upon the immigrant, and his response, they are exceedingly valuable, and
in some important respects almost unique.
[301] "Bidrag til vore Settlementers og Menigheders Historie."
The editors and business agents of the larger and more enterprising
Scandinavian papers very early began making journeys about the country,
especially into the newer parts, in the interests of their papers;
incidentally they were spying out the land for themselves, but
indirectly they were furnishing first-hand observations of frontier
conditions to the hundreds who were moved to reinvest themselves and
their small accumulations. One of these "circuit riders" was Johan
Schröder, editor of _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_, founded at La Crosse,
in 1864, who published a little book of information for immigrants in
1867, after one of his extensive journeys among the settlements.[302]
Three years later he made a trip into Minnesota as far as Otter Tail
County--"En Snartur i Nordvesten"--and was deeply impressed with the
possibilities of that fertile section, to which many men of his
nationality were already looking, as the Newtown folk in Massachusetts
Bay looked in 1636 toward the Connecticut country, with a "strong bent
of their spirits to move thither." Such words as these were as seed sown
in good soil: "So far as I have journeyed about in the prairie counties
of Minnesota and Iowa, I have not yet met with any county which in
multiplicity of natural resources can come up with Otter Tail.
Immigration this year is very strong. Both newcomers direct from Norway,
and older farmers from Iowa, Wisconsin and Southern Minnesota take their
various ways thither."[303] The "America fever" of the Old World was now
the "West fever," and again more of the "West fever."[304] These
articles were not mere generalizations, but often, as in those just
quoted from, they gave the exact and practical information the reader
would desire--break-up of the prairie would cost $25 or $30 for five
acres on which to grow wheat and potatoes, cash to be had by working on
the nearby railroad at $2.50 per day, salt to be had at five cents per
pound, butter could be sold for ten cents per pound, fish and game were
abundant,--also mosquitoes![305]
[302] This valuable little book bore the title _Skandinaverne i de
Forenede Stater og Canada, med Indberetninger og Oplysninger fra
200 Skandinaviske Settlementer. En Ledetraad for Emigranten fra
det gamle Land og for Nybyggeren in Amerika._
[303] Translated from _Fæderelandet og Emigranten_, July 21, 1870.
[304] Schröder, _Skandinaverne i de Forenede Stater og Canada_ (1867),
53.
[305] _Ibid._, 53; also a two-and-a-half-column article "Vink til
Nysettlere i Minnesota," in _Fædrelandet og Emigranten_,
June 29, 1871.
The first of a long line of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish periodicals
in the west, was a little paper called _Nordlyset_ (Northern Light),
which began publication in the Norwegian colony in Racine county,
Wisconsin, in 1847, with James D. Reymert as editor. It was a small
four-page sheet which at the start espoused the cause of the Free Soil
party. In 1850 it changed hands, and was re-christened _Demokraten_; tho
its subscription list increased to three hundred, the venture proved a
failure.[306]
[306] Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, 94-107. Langeland succeeded
Reymert as editor of _Nordlyset_. A few copies of _Nordlyset_,
_Demokraten_, _Emigranten_, and some fifteen other early
Norwegian papers were found some years ago in the hands of an
old Norwegian, Christopher Hanson of St. Ansgar, Iowa. By him
they were turned over to Rasmus B. Anderson, then editor of
_Amerika_. _Amerika_, Jan. 4, 1899. Anderson sold the collection
for $100 to the United Church in whose Seminary Library it now
rests. "Raport fra Komiteen til Indsamling af historiske
Documenter," _Beretning om det syttende Aarsmöde for den
Forenede norsk lutherske Kirke i Amerika_ (1906), 126-128.
After 1850 the number of Scandinavian newspapers and religious
periodicals multiplied rapidly. Langeland, himself an editor and
publisher of the time, mentions five of these publications on the
Norwegian side alone in the decade following 1850.[307] _Skandinaven_,
whose foundation marks an era in the Scandinavian press, dates back to
this period. From its small beginnings has grown a great metropolitan
daily, with a circulation of 20,000, besides its semi-weekly and weekly
editions which have a circulation all over the Northwest of nearly
50,000.[308] In the ten years after 1870, a second expansion in the
number of publications took place, tho the fifteen Scandinavian papers
given in the list published in the standard newspaper directory for
1870, make an almost insignificant showing by the side of the two
hundred and fifty or more printed in America in German.[309]
[307] Langeland, _Nordmændene i Amerika_, 96-112.
[308] "Den skandinaviske tidnings-pressens barndom i Amerika,"
_Hemlandet_, Feb. 25, March 4, 1913; Hansen and Wist, "Den
Norsk-Amerikanske Presse". _Norsk-Amerikanernes Festskrift_,
1914. 9-203.
[309] Rowell, _American Newspaper Directory_, 1870, 948.
The Swedish press in the United States began somewhat later than the
Norwegian, but it manifested a stability and steadiness of progress
which the latter too often lacked. _Hemlandet_ was founded in 1855 as an
organ of Swedish Lutheranism, but in 1870 it was a political as well as
a religious journal, with 4,000 subscribers to the weekly edition, and
2,000 to the monthly,--"the largest circulation of any Swedish political
newspaper in this country."[310]
[310] _Ibid._, 633.
The high-water mark in the number of these publications in the Northern
tongues seems to have been in 1892 or 1893, when Rowell mentions 146, of
which Minnesota is credited with 33, Illinois with 30, Iowa with 13, and
Wisconsin with 10, a total for these four States of 86, with a reported
total of 140,000 subscribers, out of 550,000 subscribers for all the
Scandinavian papers in the country. By 1901, the number of papers had
fallen off--many suspended in the hard times after 1893[311]--but the
number of subscribers increased for the whole country to more than
800,000, and for the four States just enumerated, to more than
650,000.[312]
[311] _The North_, Aug. 9, 1893, reports six weeklies "suspended
within the past few weeks."
[312] Rowell, _American Newspaper Directory_ for years named;
_Hemlandet_, Mar. 4, 1903: "De svenska tidningarne i Amerika har
nu sammenlagt en prenumerantsiffra som uppgår till 400,000."
The politics and religion of the papers reflected the variegated
opinions of different parties and sects, and of men who would found new
parties and denominations, but Lutheranism and Republicanism have been
from the start the dominating influences. A historian of Lutheranism
named 16 Swedish Evangelical Lutheran periodicals in existence in the
United States in 1896.[313] About the same time a Democratic paper
remarks grudgingly and sourly: "It is worthy of note that of the fifty
or sixty Norwegian papers in the United States, including two dailies,
all are Republican tho at rare intervals some may bolt individual
nominations. Generally, however, they are amazingly steadfast to
party--moss-backed and hide-bound, in fact."[314]
[313] Lenker, _Lutherans in all Lands_, 771.
[314] _Madison Democrat_, Oct. 6, 1898.
The strong hold which this press exercises upon its subscribers is
excellently illustrated in the large sums of money raised from time to
time through its agency in behalf of sufferers from fire and famine in
the North European peninsulas. By editorials and special correspondence,
by subscriptions and the publications of lists of contributors, by
stimulating concerts for raising relief moneys, these journals have
pursued the shrewd, enterprising, and, at the same time, benevolent
schemes of advertising, followed by their American contemporaries. In
1893 _Skandinaven_ received and remitted to Norway for the relief of
sufferers from a landslide in Thelemark more than $2,700.[315] When a
great fire nearly destroyed the city of Aalesund, that journal in the
winter and spring of 1904 gathered and sent to Norway $19,000, mostly in
sums ranging from $.25 to $2.00; at the same time _Decorah Posten_
remitted more than $12,000 for the same purpose.[316] The great famine
in northern Sweden and Finland in 1902-3 gave rise to a similar
collection of money; the editor of the _Svenska Amerikanska Posten_, the
powerful Swedish newspaper of Minneapolis, headed the list for his
paper, and at the end of several months the contributions through this
one journal reached the total of approximately $18,000.[317] Of course
not all the money so liberally poured out to aid the unfortunate by the
Baltic or the North Sea, was transmitted through the agents of the
newspapers, but it is true that almost the sole inspiration for the
gifts came more or less directly from the Scandinavian press. Probably
out of $175,000 sent from the United States to the famine sufferers in
1903,--and America's quota was about one-half of the total handled by the
Swedish central committee in Stockholm--the newspapers were instrumental
in raising fifty per-cent.[318]
[315] _Skandinaven_, May 3, May 31, 1893.
[316] _Ibid._, Jan. 27-April 30, 1904; _Dannevirke_, March 30, 1904.
[317] _Svenska Amerikanska Posten_, Feb. 17, June 30, 1903.
[318] _Hemlandet_, Feb. 25 (quoting from _Nya Dagligt Allehanda_ of
Stockholm for Feb. 7), July 15, Aug. 19, 1903.