[CHAPTER XIII.]
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.