CONCLUSION
The meaning of the word American as applied to the inhabitants of the
United States, has undergone a great change as they have multiplied
fifteenfold in numbers and many times in varieties of nationalities in
the course of a century. In that progress the Norwegians, Swedes, and
Danes have played a conspicuous and constructive part. As late as 1840,
American ordinarily meant a white person of English descent, born in
America or resident in the United States long enough to understand and
accept as fundamental and vital certain political and social ideals and
ideas. That simple and definite significance applies no more. The
American race is already alarmingly complex, tho the old type has been
more closely adhered to than would be expected from an enumeration of
the elements which have gone into the crucible.
In temperament, early training, and ideals, the Scandinavians more
nearly approach the American type than any other class of immigrants,
except those from Great Britain. In such features as adaptability and
loyalty without reservation, no exceptions need be made. They have not
come to the New World merely to get away from Europe, nor to escape
Siberian exile or an Abyssinian war; nor has their motive been one of
ordinary adventure-seeking. Theirs has been a determined purpose and a
serious resolve to "arrive" somewhere in America, and, finding their
places, to fill them with honorable endeavor and steady ambition. They
have come as families, or with a wholesome desire to establish families
for themselves. Most of them have fallen considerably below the best
types of their own nationalities; their conservatism has sometimes been
of the degenerate sort bordering on stolidity; their independence and
individualism has come painfully near stubbornness; and their shrewdness
has not infrequently developed into insincerity. They have now and then
manifested a clannishness which led them into disagreeable, if
temporary, complications.
The fact that this characteristic or that tendency exists in an
immigrant or alien element, should not cause disturbance of mind to the
good citizen, the statesman, or the scholar; the real question is
whether this characteristic or tendency is growing stronger or
disappearing more or less rapidly. For example, is the stolidity of a
group deepening, or does mental agility develop in the second and third
generation? That the Scandinavians have readily outgrown much of their
clannishness, perceptibly quickened their energies in the new
environment, and developed notably in social, commercial, and political
efficiency cannot be seriously questioned by any one who studies their
activities as a whole, or who has observed them for two generations.
The immigrants from the North are decently educated, able-bodied,
law-abiding men and women, not illiterates, paupers, or criminals. They
are not here as exiles from home and country for a few years, after
which they purpose to return to their native lands, there to enjoy a
cheap and narrow idleness. They are in the United States as citizens, to
become thoroly and loyally American. Their ingrained habits of industry
and economy, coupled with a natural conservatism and shrewdness, have
given them material success and contributed in large measure to the
prosperity of the States in which they have made their settlements. They
have ever striven for homes, and while some of them have been content
for a few years to serve others, the proletariat has not been largely
recruited from them. Mere wage-earning has not been a permanent
condition, but a stepping stone to a greater or less degree of
independence. In politics and in war they have evidenced their ability
to stand side by side with the native-born of New England, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and Indiana, and, with real faithfulness and efficiency to fill
such places, low or high, as shall be opened to them.
Tho as Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes they will gradually disappear,
becoming indistinguishable from other Americans, their fundamental
characteristics cannot be blotted out even in the third and fourth
generation. Men do not change so readily, even under the most favorable
conditions. Fresh additions from Europe will continue to re-enforce the
old stock; but they too will be sturdy, independent, and Protestant. It
is not too much to expect that their virtues of intelligence, patience,
persistence, and thrift, will be preserved as they mingle in the current
of national life. The demand for these qualities will be steady; the
supply on the part of the Scandinavians will not be readily exhausted.
The intermarriage and amalgamation of two peoples so closely allied as
the Scandinavians and Americans connotes much of promise and little of
danger.
Several forces will continue to operate in the future, as they have in
the past, against perpetuating any distinctively Scandinavian influence
on the population or institutions of the United States. All three
Northern peoples are particularly free from other than traditional ties
and sentimental attachments binding them to the mother countries. No one
of the three kingdoms is great or powerful in the affairs of Europe; the
heroes of the past, like Gustavus Adolphus, are too far away in time to
affect powerfully the imaginations of today. Patriotism with them in the
Old World is quite as much a sentiment or love for the parish or the
homestead as it is a fierce and militant passion for the power and
leadership of the nation. No dramatic outbursts of national feeling, or
antagonisms to ancient enemies, will rekindle old enthusiasms in the
American Scandinavians. Even the prospect of war between Norway and
Sweden, when the former dissolved the Dual Monarchy, did not profoundly
stir the Swedes or Norwegians in the Northwest; and had war broken out
all the recruits from America could probably have been shipped across
the Atlantic in one voyage of a small steamship.
Furthermore, no great and permanent causes centering in Europe
continually demand their active and intense sympathy and financial aid,
knitting them closely together, as in the case of the Irish or the
Russians. The Scandinavian contributions to European causes have been
filial and fraternal, never political, never revolutionary, never such
as to raise a national issue in America. Their church organizations,
decentralized, centrifugal rather than centripetal, recognizing no unity
under a temporal head, cannot be turned into a keen, insinuating
political weapon. They have no secret societies ramifying through their
settlements, no Mafias, "Molly Maguires," anarchist lodges, or other
badges of ancient servitude or foreign hates.
The Scandinavians, knowing the price of American citizenship, have paid
it ungrudgingly, and are proud of the possession of the high
prerogatives and privileges conferred. They fit readily into places
among the best and most serviceable of the nation's citizens; without
long hammering or costly chiseling they give strength and stability, if
not beauty and the delicate refinements of culture, to the social and
economic structure of the United States.
For all these reasons the difficulties of the United States in adjusting
the life and ideals and institutions of the nation to the presence of
foreigners are reduced in the case of the Scandinavians to a minimum.
The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes are not likely to furnish great
leaders, but they will be in the front rank of those who follow with
sturdy intelligence and conscience, striving to make the land of their
adoption strong and prosperous,--"a blessing to the common man,"
according to the original vision of America seen by Sweden's great king
Gustavus Adolphus. They will be builders, not destroyers; their greatest
service will be as a mighty, silent, steadying influence, re-enforcing
those high qualities which are sometimes called Puritan, sometimes
American, but which in any case make for local and national peace,
progress, and righteousness.