a Norse peasant lad rising to be governor or senator in this country thrills as did, near a thousand years ago, the romantic tale of some Varangian back from service in the emperor's guard at Constantinople.

In the home-land, a distinguished Norwegian-American, Dr. Wergeland, finds:

Such an oppressive spiritual atmosphere of narrow-minded intolerance, of unloving readiness to raise tea-cup storms, of insolence, private and political, of clerical and æsthetic arrogance, that the Norseman, though scarcely knowing why, longs to get away from it all and to breathe a fresher, sweeter air. No wonder the people emigrate. There is a peculiar hardness and inflexibility in the Norseman's nature, and the mild virtues of forbearance grow but sparsely in his surroundings. This is perhaps the reason why the Norse immigrant brings to his new homestead for the first four or five years nothing but an open mouth and a silent tongue-speechless astonishment. And this is the reason that to come back to Norway, after spending some years abroad, is so often like coming from open fields into narrow alleys.

In this strain writes a North Dakota pioneer:

What of change the new-comer notices in us American Norsemen is good manners; the respect shown to women; the small class distinctions between rich and poor, high and low; and, finally, the quickness and practical insight into work and business.

and is in a closer correspondence with his surroundings. His sympathies are widened, and he takes more interest in what is going on in the world.

CONTRASTS AMONG SCANDINAVIANS IT will not do to shuffle all our Scandinavians into one pack. The Danes are courteous and pleasure-loving, though moody, and they run to moderation in virtues as in vices. The Swedes bear the impress of a society that has long known aristocracy, refinement, and industrialism. They are more polished of manner than the Norwegians, although the humble betray a servility which grates upon Americans. Many show a sociability and a love of pleasure worthy of "the French of the North." They bring, too, a love of letters, and I am told that most of the servant-girls write verse. The editor of a Swedish weekly receives very well written. poems and contributions from his readers. Learning stands high with the Swedes, and since John Ericsson they have sent us many fine technical men. Only lately their great chemist Arrhenius hazarded the prediction that, owing to the tendency of American men of ability to go into business, our university chairs will some day be filled principally with scholars of German and Scandinavian blood.

The Swede is more melancholy than the Norseman, and his letters to friends in the old country are full of the expression of feeling. He has the temperament for pietism, which has always been marked among the Swedish-Americans because

I was often surprised to find that persons who had never seen me before took me at once for an American. It seems that even the expression of one's face is greatly changed here. During this visit I discovered that my mode of thinking and my spiritual life had changed so much during my thirteen years in America that I did not feel quite at home with my childhood friends. . . . The Norwegian who has lived a while in America is more civilized than if he had not been here. He has seen more, experienced more, thought more, and all this has opened his eyes and broadened his view. He is more wide-awake, lives a richer life,

herents of the state church. Formerly the Swedes came from the country, and were conservative; but of late they have been coming from the cities, and are of a radical and even socialistic spirit.

The Norwegian bears the stamp of a more primitive life. Squeezed into the few roods betwixt mountain and fiord, he has eked out the scanty yield of his farm by grazing the high glacier-fed meadows and gleaning the spoil of the sea. The need which ten centuries ago drove the Vikings to harry Europe, to-day forces their descendants into all the navies of the world. Granite and frost have made the Norse immigrant rough-mannered, reserved, and undemonstrative, cautious in

speech, austere in church life, and little given to recreation. German Gemüthlichkeit is not in him, nor has he the Irishman's sociability. Often he is as taciturn as an Indian, and the lonely farm-houses on the prairie, where not a needless word is uttered the livelong day, contribute many young people to the city maëlstrom. The Norwegian immigrant has the many virtues of a people that has never known the steam-roller of feudalism, of peasants who held their farms under an odel tenure, and could order the king himself off their land. He has more pride of nationality than the Swede, gets into our politics sooner, and is more aggressive in improving his opportunities. He has the name of being truer to his friends and to his word. Firms declare that they lose less by his bad debts. "The Swede," remarks an educator, "will show the white feather and desert you in a pinch; but not the Norwegian." A mine "boss" thinks he can distinguish Scandinavians by type. "The smooth, white-haired fellows," he says, "have a yellow streak in them; but the dark, or sandy-haired fellows, with a rough skin and rugged features, are reliable." In the Northwest, the nickname "Norsky" is more apt to be used in a good-natured way than the term "Swede."

INTELLECTUAL ABILITY

SINCE our editors and public men tender each nationality of immigrants-as soon as they have money and votes-nothing but lollipops of compliment, one is loth to proffer the pungent olive of truth. But it is a fact that many who have to do with the Americans of Scandinavian parentage question whether marked ability so often. presents itself among them as among certain other strains. The weight of testimony indicates that resourcefulness and intellectual initiative are rarer among them than among those of German descent. Teachers find their children "rather slow," although few fall behind. Scandinavian students do well, but they are "plodders." They beat the Irish in close application, but less often are they called "brilliant."

Of 19,000 Americans recognized in "Who's Who in America," 332 were born in Germany, 151 in Ireland, 68 in France, 54 in Sweden, 42 in Russia, 41 in the Netherlands, 34 in Switzerland, 33 in

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Austria, 30 in Norway, 28 in Italy, and 14 in Denmark. The Scandinavians have reached prominence far less often than the French, Dutch, and Swiss Americans, and not so often even as the Germans. the first thousand men of science in America, our Swedish fellow-citizens contribute at the rate of 5.2 per million as against 1.8 for the Irish, 7.1 for the Germans, 7.4 for those born in Russia, and 10.4 for those born in Austria-Hungary.

It is a fair question, then, whether our Scandinavians represent the flower of their people as well as the root and stalk. No doubt in venturesomeness they surpass those in like circumstances who stayed at home. No doubt they brought in full measure the forceful character of the race; but, thanks to our bland, syrupy way of appraising the naturalized foreign-born, the question of comparative brain power

never comes up.

Now, oppression or persecution had very little to do with the outflow from Scandinavia. The immigrants came for a better living, for, in the main, they have been servants and common laborers, with a sprinkling of small farmers and a fair contingent of craftsmen. We have had very few representatives of the classes enjoying access to higher education, business, the professions, and the public service. Having fair prospects at home, the more capable families very likely contributed fewer emigrants than the rest. A professor of Swedish parentage tells me he has noticed that the successful Swedes he meets traveling in this country are wholly different in physiognomy from the immigrants. The faces here strike him as duller and less regular than the faces of people in Sweden. Other Swedish-Americans, however, contend that formerly caste barriers in the fatherland so blocked the rise of gifted commoners that the immigrant stream is as rich in natural ability as is the Swedish people at home. Rugged Norway has less to hold at home the more capable stocks; but still one meets with candid Norwegian-Americans who think our million of Norse blood represent the brawn of their folk rather than the brain.

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TRAITS

NORSE mythology is to Celtic mythology what a Yukon forest is to an Amazonian jungle. In the sagas of Iceland the fancy

dot of this size represents 200 persons

⚫dot of this size represents 20,000 persons

To

never runs riot as it does in the legends of Connemara or of Brittany. It is not surprising, then, that our Scandinavians are not distinguished for visual imagination. Professors notice that the lads of this breed are slow to grasp the principle of the machinery about the college of agriculture, and need a diagram to supplement oral description of a ventilating system. them even a drawing is a maze of lines rather than a picture. A physical director working among Scandinavians labored in vain to get his trustees to imagine from the blue-prints how the new gymnasium would look. Not until the scaffolding was down were his gymnasts satisfied that there would be "room to do the giant swing." His boy scouts had no faith in a selected camp-site till the brush was actually cleared from it. They lacked "the mind's eye."

"It is not enough," remarks a settlement head, "to show rich Nils or Lars 'how the other half lives'; you 've got to clinch your appeal by showing him how the other half ought to live." Says a social worker, "I picture to the poor Slovak an eightroom, steam-heated house as a goal, and he will work for it; but the poor Swede

can't imagine such a house as his own, so I have to talk to him of the four-room house he will one day possess."

It is said that, as merchant, the Scandinavian puts little visualizing into his advertisements, and is slow to catch the vision of a community prosperity through team-work. As business man, he is a "stand-patter," able to run a going concern, but without the American's power to anticipate developments and to plant a business where none exists. As farmer, he is not so far-sighted as the German. He will burn off the growth on his cutover land till the humus has been consumed, or wear out his fields with some profitable, but exhausting, crop, like tobacco. As investor, he is the opposite of the imaginative, speculative American, for large, remote profits do not appeal to him. As labor leader, he lacks vision and idealism. On the stump he does not address the imagination as does the Hibernian spellbinder. As advocate, he makes a hard-headed plea without sentiment, and as after-dinner speaker he lacks in wit and fancy.

So little sociable are the Scandinavians that it is said "ice-water runs in their

veins." Even liquor will not start the current of fraternal feeling. They care little for the social side of their laborunions, and neglect the regular meetings. They do not warm up to an employer who treats them "right." Without the happy art of mixing and fraternizing, these sons of the North do not shine as bar-tenders, salesmen, canvassers, commercial travelers, or life-insurance solicitors. As street-car conductors in Minneapolis they are said to be less helpful and polite than the American or the Irish conductors of St. Paul. Teachers of this blood do not easily attach their pupils to them; while the children, instead of being inspired by an audience, as are the Irish, become tongue-tied. Often one hears a Often one hears a teacher lament, "I can't get anything out of them."

There is sweetness in the Scandinavian nature, but you reach it deep down past flint. The late Governor Johnson of Minnesota drew people because he had imagination and tenderness-traits none too common among his people. They are undemonstrative in the family, and it is not surprising that their youth on the farms are restless from heart-hunger. Besides, there is dearth of recreation. The Norwegian has his violin, but the Swedish folk-dances we hear so much about were not brought in by the immigrants. They lack the German Männerchor, Turnverein, and Schuetzenfest. It is unusual to It is unusual to find them organizing athletic sports. Their social gatherings center in the church, which of course acts as a damper on the spirits of the young. They love fun, to be sure, but have not the knack of making it. Shut up within themselves, hard to reach, slow to kindle, and dominated by an austere hell-fire theology, they are too often the prey of somber moods and victims of suicide and insanity.

An experienced social worker finds self

ishness the besetting sin of the Scandinavians he deals with. If a settlement class gets a room or a camp, they object to any others using it. In any undertaking they have in common with other nationalities they try to get the best for themselves. They withhold aid from the distressed of another nationality, while the Irish will respond generously to the same appeal. A labor leader notices that the Scandinavian working-men are "hard givers."

On the other hand, an observer remarks: "For a suffering person, circulate your subscription paper among the Irish; for a good cause, circulate it among the Scandinavians." In other words, the goodness of these people is from the head rather than from the heart. "If I can get him to see it as his duty," testifies a charity worker, "the Scandinavian will go almost any length." Credit men rank them with the Germans as the surest pay. Insurance agents say no other people are so faithful in paying their premiums "on the nail." If there is a suspicious fire in a store, the owner's name never ends in "son." In Minnesota there are more cooperative stores, creameries, and elevators in the Scandinavian communities than in the American.

The Norwegians have been vinile politically, and their politics has reflected moral ideas. They look upon public office as a trust, not a means of livelihood. In the days of Populism they were more open-minded than the Americans. In Wisconsin they have furnished a stanch support for the constructive policies which have drawn upon that State national attention. In the critical divisions in the Minnesota legislature all but one or two of the Scandinavian members are found on the "right side." The "interests" have the Germans,-brewing being an "interest," the Irish, and many Ameri

cans.

TH

HE new tariff law of the United States is an attempt to express in figures and fixed terms the more or less vaguely understood wishes of a great majority of the American people. How nearly the attempt has been successful it will be possible to tell later in more accurate measure, but that the signing of this bill by President Wilson took the tariff out of politics, or, in other words, accomplished what has heretofore been held to be impossible, is unquestionable. The tariff is no longer a "local issue." If the Republican, Progressive, or any other political party succeeds the Democrats as a result of the next national election, no serious attempt will be made by the incomers to restore the higher tariff schedules of recent years, and no party would now dare conduct a campaign with a promise of generally higher import duties as its principal claim upon the vote.

Great national changes in social, political, or economic policy are born "beneath the threshold of public consciousness." These issues are not created by any party, nor do they originate in the teachings of any one man. Statesmen are those who with exceptional vision and power of expression give voice to the wishes and needs of a generally inarticulate public. The Republican party remained in power for many years, so long, in fact, that it achieved a blind faith in the power and righteousness of the party cause. For years public opinion in favor of a revision of the tariff, increased trade facilities with foreign peoples, and less protection for pampered industries, hast been growing apace. Ten years ago a census of 2000 newspapers in the United States showed that all those with Democratic proclivities and two thirds of those professing Republicanism were in favor of tariff revision and reciprocity. Republican party-leaders, drawing their support as they did from the highly protected industries, and unwilling to enter

The

boldly in upon new fields of political progress, clung to a high tariff as the one policy which would save the party, and incidentally the country, from disaster. They persistently kept a blind eye toward numerous danger-signals, and turned a deaf ear to demands from the people for a more intelligently adjusted fiscal system.

There was, however, one distinguished. prophet among them, and, strange to say, it was the man whose name above all is held to be synonymous with extreme protection. An intimate personal friend of President McKinley was with him at his home in Canton, Ohio, when the President was preparing the now famous reciprocity speech he made later at Buffalo. Tariff matters were under discussion, and the friend, himself heavily interested in a certain industry, asked the President why he had permitted so high a tariff to be maintained upon his particular line of manufactured goods, at the same time stating his belief that it might lead to capitalization of earnings rather than assets, which in his opinion would be dan

gerous.

President McKinley's answer was, "For the best of reasons-to have my bill passed," and then explained further, saying that he had felt it would be better to accept compromises, and have the bill speedily enacted into law, rather than jeopardize it by antagonizing powerful interests, inasmuch as he had plans later on for reducing the schedules which were placed too high and for making reciprocity agreements with foreign nations, which would soon be necessary. President McKinley also remarked that his position as President had enabled him to widen his horizon; that his policy had been successful in holding the home markets for home manufacturers, and that it was now his hope that America would reach out for foreign markets as never before. He believed that, with American resources and initiative, American manufacturers would