senators, and representatives in Congress give evidence to a racial
clannishness that has more than once proven stronger than party
allegiance. Yet with all their influence in the Northwest, they have
not insisted on unreasonable race recognition, as have the Germans in
Wisconsin and other localities. Minnesota and Dakota have established
classes in "the Scandinavian language" in their state universities,
evidently leaving it to be decided as an academic question which is
_the_ Scandinavian language. Without brilliance, producing few
leaders, the Norseman represents the rugged commonplace of American
life, avoiding the catastrophes of a soaring ambition on the one hand
and the pitfalls of a jaded temperamentalism on the other. Bent on
self-improvement, he scrupulously patronizes farmers' institutes, high
schools, and extension courses, and listens with intelligent patience
to lectures that would put an American audience to sleep. This son of
the North has greatly buttressed every worthy American institution
with the stern traditional virtues of the tiller of the soil. Strength
he gives, if not grace, and that at a time when all social
institutions are being shaken to their foundations.

Among the early homesteaders in the upper Mississippi Valley there
were a substantial number of Bohemians. In Nebraska they comprise nine
per cent of the foreign born population, in Oklahoma seven per cent,
and in Texas over six per cent. They began migrating in the turbulent
forties. They were nearly all of the peasant class, neat, industrious
and intelligent, and they usually settled in colonies where they
retained their native tongue and customs. They were opposed to
slavery and many enlisted in the Union cause.

Among the Polish immigrants who came to America before 1870, many
settled on farms in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and other States. They