One reason for the low ebb of church influence among the Danes is undoubtedly the wranglings of the clergy over matters of theology and polity, a continuation of the factional differences between the followers of Bishop Grundtvig and the anti-Grundtvigians or Inner Mission people in the years 1854-1895. In its beginning, the Danish Lutheran Church in America unanimously adopted this resolution: “We, the Danish ministers and congregations, hereby declare ourselves to be a branch of the Danish National Church, a missionary department established by that church in America.”[142] The government of Denmark recognized this relation; graduates of the University of Copenhagen, who received calls to churches in America, were ordained by a bishop in Denmark, and were appointed by the King as regular ministers in the Danish Church; and since 1884 the Danish Government has made a small annual appropriation for the education of ministers for the American branch of the Danish Church. This allowance was at first spent in Denmark, but since 1887, in the United States.[143] But with all this effort at maintaining unity and continuity, the American branch has not been united, peaceable or effective.
If the test of supporting educational institutions for their own people be applied to the Danes, the same deficiency of interest and contributions as in matters ecclesiastical, will be revealed. The attempt of the Grundtvigians to set up the peculiar “high schools” which they maintained in Denmark, for instruction of the common people in Scandinavian history, mythology, religion, language, and literature, all in Danish, was doomed to failure.[144] The first of these schools was located at Elk Horn, Iowa, in the midst of the largest Danish settlement in the United States, yet in the fifteen years after its establishment in 1878 the average attendance never reached forty. Four other schools, in Ashland, Michigan, in Nysted, Nebraska, in Polk County, Wisconsin, and in Lincoln County, Minnesota, all established between 1878 and 1888, suffered from like indifference and lack of financial help; not one averaged thirty pupils per year. Aside from tuition, the contributions of the Danes for educational purposes did not reach fifty cents per communicant during any consecutive five years up to 1894.[145] This is a poor showing alongside the three dollars per communicant contributed by the Norwegians when they were building Decorah College in 1861 to 1865.[146]
[CHAPTER VII.]
A Half Century of Expansion and Distribution, 1850-1900.
While the immigration movement from Norway and Sweden was well-established by 1850, and certain to expand, it was numerically unimportant when compared with that from some other countries of Europe. In 1849 the influx from all Scandinavia was slightly more than one per-cent of the total immigration from Europe. Yet the rising stream had, by 1850, worn for itself a clear and definite channel from eastern ports like New York and Boston to such gateways to the Northwest as Chicago and Milwaukee; and through these it continued to flow out over the wilderness of the upper Mississippi Valley extending north of the Missouri and Illinois Rivers and west of the Great Lakes. For more than a half century there have been relatively few variations from this course, tho in the later decades, with an increase in the proportion of skilled laborers among the incoming thousands, certain eastern cities have detained a considerable percentage.
No other marked change in the character and quality of the immigrants has developed since 1850, nor have any new motives appeared, except in the case of the Danes, to be discussed later. In a word, the Scandinavian immigration since 1850 is simply the earlier Scandinavian immigration enlarged in numbers, with broader and deeper significance. The areas of interest in emigration in Europe gradually extended to every part and every class of the three Northern kingdoms; and the localities attractive to Scandinavians in the United States, expanded until eight contiguous States in the Old Northwest and the Newer Northwest showed each a foreign-born population of Northmen numbering more than thirty thousand. In the State of Minnesota they now reach close to a quarter of a million.[147]
The total recorded Scandinavian immigration, according to the statistics of the United States, from 1820 to 1912, is in round numbers 2,200,000. According to the statistics of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which may be disregarded for inaccuracy before 1850, the total falls about 142,000 short of this figure, a difference which may be easily enough accounted for by persons leaving those countries for a more or less indefinite stay in other parts of Europe, before starting for America.[148] The American statistics in later years have sometimes shown larger numbers than the Swedish, but the discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that a great number of emigrants from Finland have passed through Sweden on their way to America and therefore are counted as Swedes.[149] The totals by decades with the percentages of the whole immigration for the decades, is as follows:[150]