After the World War, when business conditions in Germany brought about some years of active emigration with the United States as its main objective, the current of emigration shifted again to the northwestern and southwestern districts (the former Nordic, the latter mainly so) and away from the northeast, which was even more Nordic.
The Scandinavian immigration, another main source of the Nordic population of the United States, dates almost entirely from the period since the Civil War. The largest volume was between 1877 and 1898, when more than 1,000,000 arrived. One-fifth of the entire population of Norway and Sweden moved to the New World, nearly all of them seeking farms in the States of the upper Mississippi Valley. There has been also an active immigration from Scandinavia since the end of the World War. In general, the United States was the only destination which a Scandinavian emigrant considered. Of those who left the homeland, not one Swede in fifty directed his course elsewhere than to America. No other emigrant population has shown such a single-minded interest in the United States, though the Norwegians have not been far behind, with 96 per cent of their departures destined to the United States; and the Danes, with 88 per cent.
Arriving at New York or sometimes Quebec, the immigrants made their way to Chicago or Detroit, and thence were distributed to the States west of the Great Lakes. The Norwegian movement was the earlier, beginning with the southern and central counties of that kingdom and gradually working its way north until arrivals were giving as their birthplaces little towns far north of the Arctic Circle.
In a few decades Norwegians owned six times as much farming land in the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and the Dakotas (four-fifths of the immigration being found in the States named) as did all the farmers in the "Old Country." No nationality has sent such a small percentage of its people into the cities—one in five of the whole, as compared with a half of the Germans, and a still higher percentage of the Irish and Italians, who seek an urban life.
This tendency to agricultural life and to prompt and whole-hearted Americanism has made the great body of Scandinavian immigrants one of the most valuable that America has received.
Meanwhile there continued a steady immigration of English and Irish. The latter envenomed our political life up to the last few years, by introducing into the United States their old political and religious feuds with Great Britain, and endeavoring to involve this country in their plans for Irish freedom. As a consequence, the friendly relations which should exist between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations have been kept disturbed, and a systematic policy of twisting the lion's tail was pursued, not merely by the Fenian agitators, but by American demagogues anxious to cultivate the "Irish vote."
Prior to 1880 only 5 per cent of the immigration was from southern and eastern Europe. Between 1860 and 1880 less than 250,000 immigrants from eastern and southern Europe came over. Then came the rush, and between 1890 and 1910 more than 8,000,000 immigrants reached our shores from southern and eastern Europe.
A group not homogeneous with the old native American population is the Italian. It began arriving after 1870, but did not reach large proportions until after 1890. Then it soon became a flood. From 1900 until the World War cut down immigration, the Italians far outnumbered all other peoples arriving on our shores.
Northern Italy has furnished us some fine types of immigrants. They are mostly Alpine with a Nordic admixture. Southern Italy, that is, Naples and Sicily, sent us almost exclusively a Mediterranean stock, which formed the great mass of Italian immigration and was of extremely inferior type. They are derived to some extent from the slaves whom the Romans gathered along the coasts of the Mediterranean from Syria to Morocco and employed on their large estates or latifundia. Among them, however, are to be found remnants of the pre-Nordic Mediterranean population of Italy.
In earlier decades the emigration from Italy was mostly of North Italians, commonly spoken of as "Genoese," but mainly from the crowded Italian Riviera west of Genoa. These went to neighboring countries, particularly France, and to South America, few of them reaching the United States. When Italian mass emigration to this country began, it was from central and southern Italy and Sicily, who are of quite different racial stock from those of the more northerly districts.