They are eager for
citizenship and are independent in politics. The glittering
generalities of Marxian socialism seem peculiarly alluring to them;
and not a few have joined the I.W.W. Drink has been their curse, but a
strong temperance movement has recently made rapid headway among them.
They are natural woodmen and wield the axe with the skill of our own
frontiersmen. Their peculiar houses, made of neatly squared logs, are
features of every Finnish settlement. All of the North European races
and a few from Southern and Eastern Europe have contributed to the
American rural population; yet the Census of 1910 disclosed the fact
that of the 6,361,502 white farm operators in the United States, 75
per cent were native American and only 10.5 per cent were foreign
born.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 29: Oberholtzer, _History of the United States since the
Civil War_, vol I, p. 275.]
[Footnote 30: Oberholtzer, _supra cit._, p. 278.]
[Footnote 31: The census of 1910 discloses the fact that of the
6,361,502 farms in the United States 75 per cent were operated by
native white Americans and only 10.5 per cent by foreign born whites.
The foreign born were distributed as follows: Austria, 33,336;
Hungary, 3827; England, 39,728; Ireland, 33,480; Scotland, 10,220;
Wales, 4110; France, 5832; Germany, 221,800; Holland, 13,790; Italy,
10,614; Russia, 25,788; Poland, 7228; Denmark, 28,375; Norway, 59,742;
Sweden, 67,453; Switzerland, 14333; Canada, 61,878.
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