The Scandinavian Element in the United States

CHAPTER XI.

The Scandinavian in Local and State Politics

The Scandinavian usually entered the field of politics rather slowly; he took out his “first papers” for the purpose of acquiring land, not that he might vote in the next election. In the early years of his settlement he was too busy building and paying for a home, learning English, and adopting American customs, to give much time or attention to public affairs. The clearing of woodland, the breaking up of the prairie, and the transformation of a one-room shack into a frame dwelling required severe labor and all his energies. Not until the leisure of some degree of success was his, did he yield to his natural inclination for politics of the larger sort.

The Norwegian, of all the men of the Northern lands, has the strongest liking for the political arena, and has had the most thoro political training at home. Since 1814 he has lived and acted in a community markedly democratic. He understands the meaning of the Fourth of July all the better because he, and his ancestors for two or three generations in their home by the North Sea, celebrated on the Seventeenth of May the independence of Norway and the advent of republicanism. His sense of individuality and equality is stronger than that of his cousins to the east or south, and he steadily and stubbornly fights for the recognition and maintenance of his rights. In 1821, before the first real immigrants sailed for the United States, Norway abolished nobility, while Sweden and Denmark still retain the institution. Equipped thus, and educated in such a vigorous school, it is the Norwegian rather than the Swede or Dane who figures most largely in the political activities of the American Northwest.

Several causes operating on the western side of the Atlantic augmented these natural advantages of the Norwegians. In their settlements they had ten or fifteen years the start of the Swedes, and in the formative period of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Dakota they greatly outnumbered both the Swedes and Danes. They went into new States and territories, and, settling on farms, profited by the power which the rural portion of a developing region usually exercises in politics. On the other hand, tho the Swedes in Illinois since the early fifties, and in Kansas since the late sixties, have formed decidedly the larger part of the Scandinavian population of those two States, they have by no means taken a part in politics equal to that taken by the Norwegians. In 1890 the foreign-born Swedes in Iowa were more numerous than the foreign-born Norwegians, and in Minnesota about equal in number, but these figures do not fairly represent the political strength of the two elements, for to the foreign-born Norwegians must be added those of the second and third generation of persons of purely Norwegian extraction.342 The sons, and even the grandsons of the early Norwegian settlers were voters before the Swedish immigration greatly exceeded the Norwegian.343 Broadly speaking, the early political pre-eminence of the Norwegians has never been overcome.

For the common people of Sweden and Denmark, political experience practically began with the agitation for the reforms of 1866 and 1867. The peasants and burghers thus came to think definitely and decisively about what they desired and of the means for securing the wished-for reforms. It may therefore be asserted without reservation that after 1870 the average Scandinavian immigrant brought to America a fairly clear understanding of the meaning of republicanism; elections, representation, local self-government, and constitutions, are neither novel nor meaningless terms to him; he is ready to fill his place, play his part, and cast his vote, as “a citizen of no mean city.” In the discharge of their civic duties, the Scandinavian voters have had the aid of several unusually well edited newspapers in their own languages. Since active participation in politics and patriotism are not always synonymous, one branch of the Scandinavian peoples may be just as patriotic as another. Certain it is that in the Civil War the Swedes were every whit as prompt and hearty in their response to calls for men, and as thoro in their efficiency and courage as soldiers, as were the Norwegians.

From a political view-point, the importance of the Norse immigrants in the agricultural regions of the West has not been fully recognized. At first thought, it would seem that location in a city or town, with its intimate associations and sharper competitions, with its friction of frequent contact with Americans, should be more conducive to rapid Americanization of immigrants, than the life of the farm or of the rural village, with its isolation and narrow horizon. More careful consideration will make clear that the opportunities for political action beyond merely casting a vote, are really much better in a new, thinly-settled township than in a ward of a large town or city. It surely was not a hunger for the sweets of political influence or official place which led the Scandinavians into frontier regions; but once there, with the old political ties forever severed by taking out their “first papers,” with partial title to land entered by preemption or by homesteading, their first and greatest steps in Americanization were safely made, and each one carried certain political consequences. Local political organization had to be effected somehow as a given locality filled up, and it happened frequently that there were none but Scandinavians to undertake the task. No matter what their political inclinations, no matter what form of organization they would have preferred, only one course was open to them: to get information as to the laws and customs of the United States and of the States in which they were settled, to prepare for the elections, and to assume the responsibilities of the necessary offices. Over and over again these things were done promptly and well by men in whose veins coursed only Viking blood, by men but recently transplanted from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

Whenever a township became populous enough to have a name as well as a number on the surveyor’s map, that question was likely to be determined by the people on the ground, and such names as Christiana, Swede Plain, Numedal, Throndhjem, and Vasa leave no doubt that Scandinavians officiated at the christening.344 Besides the names of townships, Minnesota alone has no fewer than seventy-five post-offices whose names are unmistakably Norse, – Malmö, Ringbo, Ibsen, Tordenskjold, and the like. It was in organizing these new townships, working the town machinery, carrying on elections, levying and collecting taxes, and laying out roads, that the Scandinavian immigrants learned the rudiments of American politics.345 In studying the accounts of the formation of scores of towns inhabited wholly or in major part by Norwegians or Swedes – accounts usually written by Americans, and often going into minute details – not one was found which describes any noteworthy irregularity. Except for the peculiar names no one would suspect that the townmakers were born elsewhere than in Massachusetts or New York.

In some cases probably more than one-fifth of the men of the community shared in the actual administration of town affairs; and while this ratio decreased with the growth of the town, the tendency of the Scandinavian settlers to move on from one new region to another gave many of them continuing opportunities to gain political experience. Had the same number of men located in the larger towns or cities, their active duties as citizens would generally have ended with the casting of their annual ballot. A few might have become policemen, commissioners, or even aldermen, but they would have made an insignificant percentage; the management or mismanagement of finances, schools, streets, sanitation, and public services would go on without their efforts or participation.

A few illustrations selected almost at random, will give a concrete idea of the process just described. Two townships in Fillmore County, Minnesota, were organized in 1860, and received the familiar Old World names, Norway and Arendahl; at the first election, all the officers chosen in both townships were Norwegians, and for twenty years and more, the Norwegians continued to fill nearly all the offices.346 Another and later example is found in Nicollet County, Minnesota, farther west than Fillmore County, where the township of New Sweden was formed in 1864. Thirty votes were cast at the first election, and at the first town-meeting, held three months later, all the offices were filled by the election of six Swedes and four Norwegians.347 Five years later this township was divided and the name Bernadotte was given to the new township; by the first election, all ten offices were filled by Swedes.348 Other Minnesota towns, Johnsonville in Redwood County (1879), Wang in Renville County (1875), and Stockholm in Wright County (1868), were similarly organized and officered by Norwegians and Swedes.349

As the townships developed, and the villages grew into cities with large foreign-born elements, the familiar and characteristic Northern names continue to fill the official records. Stoughton, Wisconsin, the capital, so to speak, of the solid old Dane County settlement, is a case in point. So late as 1901 the roster of the city ran as follows:

Mayor, O. K. Roe, born in Dane County of Norwegian parents

President of the Council, J. S. Liebe, born in Laurvik, Norway

Aldermen, four born in different parts of Norway, two born in Dane County of Norwegian parents.350

Much of the business in these new communities in their first years was carried on in a foreign tongue. Certainly election notices and documents of that sort were issued in Norwegian or Swedish, and sometimes orders, ordinances, and laws. No evidence, however, has come to hand to prove that any official records were ever kept in any other language than English, even in villages composed almost exclusively of Norwegians or Swedes.351

One of the first offices that had to be filled in the growing settlement was that of postmaster; for no considerable number of people, educated and intelligent, will long be content with a postoffice twenty miles away.352 In 1856 there were five Scandinavian postmasters in Minnesota alone.353 Thus the immigrant settlers came in contact with the national government at the postoffice more directly and frequently than they did at the land-office.

Township affairs shade off almost imperceptibly into county affairs in the western States, and the Scandinavians soon began to take part in the latter. No records are at hand for the Wisconsin settlements, but in 1858 the first Norwegian was elected to the board of supervisors in Goodhue County, Minnesota, and in the following year Hans Mattson, who was active in building up the town of Vasa, where he filled various town offices, was elected auditor of the county.354 He continued to fill the office until July, 1862, tho in name only for the last months, for in the minutes of Board of Supervisors of Goodhue County appears the resolution that “because the County Auditor, Hans Mattson, has voluntarily gone to the war with a company of soldiers, a leave of absence shall be extended to him, and that the office shall not be declared vacant so long as the deputy properly performs the duties of the place.”355

Hans Mattson was only one of many who found Goodhue County politics and a term of service in the army excellent fitting schools for larger activity in State affairs. One of the Norwegians who served an apprenticeship in Wisconsin, a journeymanship in Iowa, and came to the master-grade of citizenship – office-holding – in Minnesota, was Lars K. Aaker, who represented Goodhue County in the Minnesota Legislature in 1859-1860. After service as first lieutenant in Mattson’s Scandinavian Company, he again sat in the Legislature in 1862, 1867, and 1869. Again after twelve years of residence in Goodhue County he moved to Otter Tail County, and represented that county in the State Senate, later becoming Register of the United States Land Office. In 1864, he moved again, to Crookston, in the extreme northwestern corner of Minnesota, where he served as Receiver of the Land Office from 1884 to 1893.356 As the counties and towns have multiplied, by the biological process of division, in Minnesota and the Dakotas, Scandinavian names recur more and more frequently in their records, tho it is not always easy, especially since 1880, to identify such names, for the Norsemen have had a habit of Americanizing their original names or changing them altogether either with or without legal process.357

The county offices which seem to be most attractive to the Scandinavians are those of sheriff, treasurer, auditor, and register of deeds. The lists of county officers for several years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, show that the number of Swedes and Norwegians in the four offices just mentioned was closely proportioned to their percentage in the population of the States named.358 Because the Scandinavians are less numerous in the other county offices, their proportion of the total offices in the counties of the States falls considerably below their proportion of the population. Estimating on the basis of a sure minimum, with the difficulties in identifying names eliminated, the Scandinavians for several years about 1895 filled approximately one-fifth of the 1235 county offices in Minnesota, one-fifth of the 268 in North Dakota and one-tenth of the 702 in Wisconsin. Their numbers relative to the population in each State were respectively one-fourth in Minnesota, two-fifths in North Dakota, one-eighth in Wisconsin, and one-fifth in South Dakota. More recent illustrations are to be found in the election of 1904. In Traill County, North Dakota, the sixth in size of the forty counties in the State, the sheriff, judge, treasurer, auditor, register, surveyor, coroner, and superintendent of schools were of Scandinavian origin; in Lac Qui Parle County, Minnesota, a similar clean sweep was made; while in Yellow Medicine County seven out of ten principal officers were Scandinavians.359

The first Scandinavian to enter the field of State politics was James D. Reymert, a Norwegian, who represented Racine County in the second constitutional convention of Wisconsin in 1847, and later in the Assembly of that State, first from Racine County and then from Milwaukee County in 1857.360 He was also a candidate for presidential elector on the Free Soil ticket in 1840.361 The son of a Scotch mother, and receiving part of his education in Scotland, he was better prepared than other Norwegians for taking part in politics, and for the work of editing the first Norwegian newspaper in America, Nordlyset– “The Northern Light” – which appeared in 1847 as a Free Soil organ.362 In the constitutional convention he was not active in the debates, tho he advocated a six-months’ residence as a qualification for voting, saying, “as to foreigners, the sooner they were entitled to vote, the better citizens they would make.”363 For one provision of the Wisconsin constitution he was personally responsible: Article VII, section 16, which directed the legislature to establish courts or tribunals of conciliation.364 But in spite of the command, “The legislature shall pass laws” for these courts, no such law was ever passed in Wisconsin.

Down to the close of the Civil War the Scandinavians exercised very little influence in State politics. Here and there one or two of them appeared as members of conventions or of the legislatures, but even in Wisconsin the number rarely went above two in a single session of the legislature.365 By 1870 many of the Norwegians and Swedes were well-to-do, while others who had served in the Civil War returned to their homes with the prestige conferred by honorable service in that great struggle. Furthermore, the suspicion with which foreign-born citizens had been viewed was greatly reduced, if not dissipated, by the highest evidence which any man can give of his patriotism and loyalty to his adopted country. No one might thenceforth deny them any of the rights, privileges, and honors of the political gild. Accordingly the number of them elected to the legislatures in the Northwest after 1870 increases noticeably both in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and in the Dakotas, where rapid material development and growth of population furnished unusual political opportunities which the Norwegians and Swedes were not slow to improve.

In the Wisconsin legislature of 1868 sat 2 Norwegians; in 1869, 3; in 1871, 4.366 In Minnesota, the figures are striking: 1868, 2 Scandinavians; 1870, 4; 1872, 9; and 1873, 13.367 Since then the percentage of Norse representatives has steadily grown, tho it is not always easy to determine the racial stock from which a native-born officer came. Recent Wisconsin legislatures had apparently out of a total membership of 133, in 1895, 5 Scandinavians; in 1901, 10 (1 Dane, 1 Swede, and 8 Norwegians); in 1903, 6.368 The Minnesota legislature of 1893 had 9 out of 54 senators, and 20 out of 114 representatives, who were of Viking origin – fully one-sixth of the total membership.

In the legislatures of 1899 and 1905 the numbers were as follows:369

In the newer States to the West, the percentages rise still higher. In North Dakota, the legislature of 93 members contained 17 men of Scandinavian parentage in 1895, and 18 in 1901 – 16 Norwegians (4 American born), one Dane, and one Icelander.370 Unofficial figures for 1904 gave the Scandinavians 38 out of 140 members.371 South Dakota in 1894 had 15 Norwegians (5 native-born) and 5 Swedes, in a legislative body of 127; in 1897, 17; in 1903, 16; and in 1904, 17.372

In the executive and administrative departments of State government, as distinguished from the legislative, the participation of the Scandinavians notably increased after 1869. In the summer of that year, a Scandinavian convention was held in Minneapolis for the express purpose of booming Colonel Hans Mattson for the office of Secretary of State in Minnesota. Of his fitness there was no doubt, for in addition to holding local offices in Goodhue County and his service in the army, he had for two years served as Commissioner of Emigration. The Republicans took the hint and nominated him almost unanimously in September, and his election followed. He served one term at this time and by re-elections filled the same office from 1887 to 1891.373 So frequently have Swedes and Norwegians been elected to this office both in Minnesota and in the Dakotas that it might almost be said that they have a prescriptive right to it.374 In the thirty-seven years ending in January, 1907, the Swedes filled the office in Minnesota sixteen years and the Norwegians four years.375 Other State offices like those of Treasurer, Auditor, and Lieutenant Governor, not to mention commissionerships and appointments to boards, have also been frequently filled by Scandinavians in the States of the Northwest.376

The first Scandinavian to reach the eminence of a governorship was Knute Nelson, an emigrant from Voss, near Bergen in Norway, in 1849, who, after service in the Civil War, was elected in succession to the legislatures of Wisconsin and Minnesota and to the Congress of the United States. Nominated by acclamation for governor of Minnesota on the Republican ticket in 1892, he was elected by a plurality of 14,620 votes; two years later he was unanimously re-nominated, and re-elected by a plurality of more than 60,000 votes.377 He served only one month of his second term, accepting election to the United States Senate, to the disappointment, not to say the disgust, of many who had voted for him for Governor, who considered him in duty bound to serve in that capacity after accepting their suffrages.

The second Scandinavian governor was a Swede born in Smaaland, who landed in the United States in 1868 at the age of fourteen – John Lind. Passing up through such political gradations as county superintendent of schools, receiver of the United States Land Office, and Republican representative in Congress, he allied himself with the free-silver movement of 1896 and became the Fusion candidate for governor of Minnesota. Opposed by the leading Swedes who remained loyal to the Republican party, he was defeated by a small majority, tho supported by many of the Norwegians. The Spanish War, in which he served as quartermaster of volunteers, gave him a new claim to popular favor, and when he again ran for governor in 1898 he was elected by a combination of Democrats and Populists, turning his former deficiency of 3,496 into a plurality of 20,399.378 This victory was due more to a revolt against the Republican candidate than to clannish support of a Swede by Swedes, for the two strongholds of the Swedes, Chisago and Goodhue Counties, went Republican as usual, while the German and Irish wards of St. Paul and Minneapolis gave majorities for Lind.

The third of Minnesota’s Scandinavian governors came into office under circumstances of distinctly dramatic character. John A. Johnson was born of Swedish parents in the State over which he was to be made ruler; at the age of fourteen he became the support of his mother and of the family, save the inebriate father who was sent to an almshouse where he died. When nominated by the Democrats in 1904, Johnson had been for eighteen years editor of a country newspaper printed in English. The Republicans, especially their candidate for governor, a coarse-grained, distrusted, machine politician, endeavored to make political capital out of the fact that Johnson’s father died in the poorhouse. The Democratic leaders persuaded Johnson with some difficulty to let the plain truth be told, and told on the stump – and Johnson, the son of a Swedish immigrant, a man from a small, interior city, a Democrat in a State strongly Republican as a rule, won by a plurality of 6,352 votes in a Presidential year, when Theodore Roosevelt carried the State by 161,464.379 Two years of vigorous but quiet administration brought the reward of a renomination and re-election in 1906 by a plurality of 76,000.380 Again in 1908, another presidential year, Governor Johnson was re-elected by 20,000 plurality, though Taft received a plurality of 85,000.381

The death of Governor Johnson in October, 1909, made the Republican Lieutenant Governor, Adolph Olson Eberhardt, the fourth Scandinavian executive of Minnesota. He was born in Sweden, the son of Andrew Olson, and came to America in his eleventh year. He added Eberhardt to his name by permission of the proper court in 1898 because several other persons in his community also bore the name of Adolph Olson. Governor Eberhardt reached the governor’s chair by various business and political experiences – as a lawyer, contractor, United States Commissioner, deputy clerk of the United States District and Circuit Courts, State senator, and lieutenant governor. He was re-elected in his own right in 1910 by a plurality of 60,000, and again in 1912 by 30,000.382

James O. Davidson rose to the governorship of Wisconsin through long service in subordinate capacities. Of Norwegian birth, immigrating in 1872, he was elected to the Wisconsin legislatures of 1893, 1895, 1897; twice chosen State Treasurer; elected Lieutenant Governor on the ticket with R. M. LaFollette, and upon the election of the latter to the United States Senate succeeded him as governor in January, 1906. In the summer of that year Senator LaFollette vainly stumped the State to prevent Davidson’s nomination for Governor on the Republican ticket, and in the election that followed the Norwegian-born, soundly-experienced Governor was chosen by the handsome plurality of 80,247 votes.383 In 1908 he was re-elected by a plurality of 76,958.