Through the occupational choices of our Danes, one can catch a glimpse of the lush meadows of Jutland. Forty per cent. of them are on the farm, ten per cent. are laborers, and four per cent. are carpenters. In butter-making and dairying they are six times as numerous as in the general work of the country; in cabinet-making and before the mast they are three and one-half times as strong. As stock-raisers and drovers, the second generation are five and one-half times as strong as they are in other lines.
Coming from an industrial country, the Swedes bring skill, and show no marked bent for agriculture. Only thirty per cent. of them are at the plow-tail; of their sons, forty-three per cent. The rest will be carpenters, miners, and quarrymen, railroad employees, machinists, iron- and steel-workers, tailors, and teamsters. Although they form only an eightieth of the army of bread-winners, one out of twelve iron-workers, one out of fourteen cabinet-makers, one out of twenty-one boatmen and sailors, and one out of twenty-five tailors is a Swede. The Swedish aristocratic view of callings is perhaps responsible for the fact that the immigrants' sons are three times as successful in getting "white-handed" jobs as the immigrants, and are much keener for such work than the sons of our Norwegians.
A like difference is visible in the choices of the daughters. Between the first generation and the second the proportion in the "ladylike" jobs increases from 3 per cent. to 13.5 per cent. among the Swedes; from 4.2 per cent. to 9.8 per cent. among the Norwegians. While the proportion of servants and waitresses falls from 61.5 per cent. to 44.5 per cent. among the Swedes, it actually rises from 46 per cent. to 48 per cent. among the Norwegians. Among the former there is a more eager flight from kitchen to factory. On the other hand, the affinity of a democratic people for education reveals itself in the fact that in both generations the Norwegian women are decidedly more likely to be teachers than the Swedish women.
ASSIMILATION
It may be true that "every Sunday Norwegian is preached in more churches in America than in Norway," still, no immigrants of foreign speech assimilate so quickly as the Scandinavians. They never pullulate in slums or stagnate in solid rural settlements. Of 10,200 families that have been studied in seven of our great cities, it was found that the 148 Swedish families had the most dwellings of five and six rooms, the largest incomes, the best housekeeping, the best command of English, and the highest proportion of voters among the men. The Scandinavians have not braced themselves against assimilation, as have the Germans, with their Deutschtum. Not being beer-bibbers, and warned by their desperate home struggle, they will not stand with the Teutons for "personal liberty" on the question of drink. The anti-liquor sentiment is very strong among them, and in the Minnesota legislature nearly all the support for county option is Scandinavian. Politically, the Norwegians are more active than the Swedes, and they have been insurgent ever since they formed in the Northwest the backbone of so American a movement as Populism.
Among the Scandinavians the spirit of self-improvement is very strong. No other foreign-born people respond so eagerly to night-school opportunities. Farmers' institutes command better attendance and attention where they abound than in straight-American neighborhoods. On a holiday celebration the address attracts more Scandinavians, the ball-game or the fireworks, more natives. As patient listeners, they match our Puritan forefathers. No other people take more pride in giving their children a chance. In the words of a Minnesota schoolman, "They are the best people in the State to appreciate education and to want it improved." Unlike the Germans, they have left no mark on American culture. Our ideas and institutions have not been changed by their coming. What they have done is to quicken our interest in the literature of the North, and to win for it academic recognition. A department of Scandinavian is found not only in Harvard and Yale, but also in a dozen universities all the way from Chicago to Seattle. Even the high schools in Minneapolis and elsewhere find place for Scandinavian.
Distribution of Scandinavians and natives of Scandinavian Parentage—1910.