The great melting pot of multicultural democracy, in history, has often left a somewhat bitter taste. In acculturating or, “becoming Americanized,” as Prof. Marcus Hansen refers to it, there is a cultural tradeoff. There is an exchange of ideas, cuisines, linguistic expression. But the great winner in this process is often a singular core national identity, the “meat and potatoes” of a nation reinforced by law, and often though not always, a prevailing language.

Like a soup, ingredients contribute to the totality of our national dish and in the process, vegetables can blanche, lose their color, and a single spice may over power the dish, until something else can be introduced to temper it. The nation, to carry on the metaphor,  is a never finished dish, its raw ingredients of manpower and distinct identities each eking out a niche while sublimating to a whole.

In the formation of modern states various identities: religious, ethnic, linguistic, racial, or by some other means, were often categorized and treated as separate within the nation. Certain identities would be frowned upon or discriminated against, even if tolerated to some degree. However, a process of homogenization alongside the great Nationalist uplift of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries radically changed that.

Whether it was the Gaelic project of restoring Ireland and reclaiming an almost lost language, asserting a language to a state, as with the Zionist enterprise in the creation of Israel, or the creation of a singular national languages as with the many dialects of “German’ or ‘Italian,” following the unifications of those countries — states began to coalesce around more singular ideas of what defined their citizens.

This process of homogenization, of becoming, not a Flemish Walloon, an Igbo Nigerian, or a Vietnamese Malay led to a more singular identity – a Belgian, a Nigerian, a Vietnamese. This process, often violent and disruptive, is ongoing, and if not a product of state formation, one of its may consequences.

As legal networks and state institutions grew and concretized, they reinforced these singular ideas, promoting if not a total acculturation, a distancing of an immigrant’s cultural identity — by other means, erasure.

Prof. Marcus Hansen came to study this process at the start of the 20th century, being a second generation American himself, he was fascinated by what was lost in this new “becoming”, the new national being, and of doors closed to the worlds of one’s past, so that the one before, in Hansen’s case the forward or, “American” might open.

            In 1851, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), published his final work Parerga and Paralipomena , a collection of essays summarizing the broad strokes of his thought. A man of the German Enlightenment over whose lifetime modernity and industrialization had begun to sweep Europe. Today Schopenhauer is known, in part, for his many witticisms and scathing remarks, as well as his keen insights into the workings of a society, including:

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest. (Schopenhauer)

The pendulum of acculturation of identity (and its loss) is one still in flux, and as Prof. Marcus Hansen argues in, "The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant," it becomes a reflection of one’s place in society, and to some extent, is shaped with each successive generation.

Hansen’s axiom,“…the almost universal phenomenon that what the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember,” seems especially relevant today. 75% of Americans are now of the third-generation or higher, with a rough approximation of ~30%, specifically falling in the category,  and an interest in cultural identity is flourishing. This can be seen by the proliferation of cultural organizations seeking to build commonality, secure and preserve memory, and create new culture.

For instance, Yiddish a language once spoken by more than ten million people, was nearly wiped out in the holocaust. Following World War II, the language was largely suppressed by many survivors seeking to, among other things, escape their trauma, or out of institutional desire to both assimilate (US) or reconnect to a new paradigm or dominant culture, in this case comprised of both Hebrew and the country of Israel.

However, following Hansen’s axiom, a core of Yiddishists (Yiddish speakers and Yiddish language and culture enthusiasts) both secular and religious and a large third generation, this author included, are part of its resurgence today. This current renaissance stems from a generation seeking to reconnect with its grandparents and keep the door open to a world that no longer exists. It is also tied to consecrating and formalizing a history for this and future generations before access to any living connections is lost forever.

These activists seek to reconnect with the language, its expressiveness and thoughts, and to revisit its culture: cuisine, customs, and celebrations. This process is happening elsewhere too, among other cultural groups centered around language, geography, religion, ethnicity, or other particular form of identity.

Today, as the unipolar star of the state is questioned, amid geopolitical shifts and resurgent populist nationalisms, the question of culture and identity is especially worthy of investigating.

In sharing this essay, among other historical essays on the complexity and nuance of multiculturalism, democracy, citizenship, and identity, there is hope to provide greater context for discussion of what weaves these various threads and what works to unravel them.

Understanding the arguments of a past generation being rehashed today allows one to draw a historical connection to societal issues that have yet to find concrete solutions.

-Aaron Lloyd Castillo-White (June, 2023)

The Augustana Historical Society has from time to time invited distinguished historians to address it. These lectures have now become a tradition and are looked forward to by its members.

Professor W. T. Root, Dr. Herbert A. Kellar, Professor Louis Pelzer, Professor G. G. Andrews, Professor George M. Stephenson, Dr. Russell Anderson, as well as the late Professor L. M. Larson, president of the American Historical Association, are among those who have addressed the Society.

At the last annual meeting of the Society on May 15, 1937, Professor M. L. Hansen of the University of Illinois read a paper entitled, "The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant."

In this paper Professor Hansen drew from his extensive research in the field of the history of immigration, in which he is an authority, and presented to the Augustana Historical Society some actual problems which must be met if the Society is to expect support and success in its work.

The lecture was so deeply appreciated by the members of the Society present at the meeting that the editorial committee was instructed to publish the address in order that those members unable to attend the annual meeting as well as others interested in Swedish-American history would have an opportunity to share it.

The editorial committee is greatly indebted to Professor Hansen for the permission to publish this lecture.

THE EDITORIAL COMMITTEE.

By long established custom whoever speaks of immigration must refer to it as a "problem." It was a problem to the first English pioneers in the New World scattered up and down the Atlantic coast. Whenever a vessel anchored in the James River and a few score weary and emaciated gentlemen, worn out by three months upon the Atlantic, stumbled up the bank, the veterans who had survived Nature's rigorous "seasoning" looked at one another in despair and asked: "Who is to feed them? Who is to teach them to fight the Indians, or grow tobacco, or clear the marshy lands and build a home in the malaria-infested swamps? These immigrants certainly are a problem." And three hundred years later when in the course of a summer more than a million Europeans walked down the gangplanks of the ocean greyhounds into the large reception halls built to receive them, government officials, social workers, journalists said: "How are these people from the peasant farms of the Mediterranean going to adjust themselves to the routine of mines and industries, and how are they going to live in a country where the language is strange, and how are they, former subjects of monarchs and lords, going to partake in the business of governing themselves? These immigrants certainly are a problem."

They certainly were. The adventurers (call them colonists or immigrants) who transferred civilization across the Atlantic numbered more than forty million souls. Every one of them was a problem to his family and himself, to the officials and landlords from whom he parted, to the officials and landlords whom he joined. On every mile of the journey, on land and on sea, they caused concern to someone. The public authorities at the ports of embarkation sighed the traditional sigh of relief when the emigrant vessel was warped away from the dock and stood out to the open sea carrying the bewildered persons who for a week or more had wandered about the streets; the captain of that vessel was happy when the last of his passengers who had complained of everything from food to weather said good-bye often with a clenched fist; and the officers of New York and Baltimore were no less happy when the newly-arrived American set out for the West. How much of a problem the forty million actually were will not be known until their history is written with realism as well as sympathy.

The problem of the immigrant was not solved; it disappeared. Foreign-born to the number of almost fifteen million are still part of the American population, but they are no longer immigrants. By one adjustment after the other they have accommodated themselves and reconciled themselves to the surrounding world of society, and when they became what the natives called "Americanized" (which was often nothing but a treaty of peace with society) they ceased to be a problem. This was the normal evolution of an individual, but as long as the group classified as immigrants was being constantly recruited by the continual influx of Europeans the problem remained.

The quota law of 1924 erected the first dam against the current and the depression of 1929 cut off the stream entirely. Statistics reveal what has happened. During the year ended June 30, 1936, there were admitted as immigrants only 36,329 aliens[2]. During the same period 35,817 aliens left the United States for permanent residence abroad-a net gain of only 512. But this was the first year since 1931 that there had been any gain at all. The great historic westward tide of Europeans has come to an end and there is no indication in American conditions or sentiment that it will ever be revived.

Thus there has been removed from the pages of magazines, from the debates in Congress and from the thoughts of social workers the well-known expression: the problem of the immigrant. Its going has foreshadowed the disappearance of a related matter of concern which was almost as troublesome as the first, a rather uncertain worry which was called "the problem of the second generation."

The sons and the daughters of the immigrants were really in a most uncomfortable position. They were subjected to the criticism and taunts of the native Americans and to the criticism and taunts of their elders as well. All who exercised any authority over them found fault with the response. Too often in the schoolroom the Yankee schoolmistress regarded them as mere dullards hardly worthy of her valuable attention. Thus neglected they strayed about the streets where the truant officer picked them up and reported them as incorrigible. The delinquency of the second generation was talked about so incessantly that finally little Fritz and little Hans became convinced that they were not like the children from the other side of the tracks. They were not slow in comprehending the source of all their woes: it lay in the strange dualism into which they had been born.

Life at home was hardly more pleasant. Whereas in the schoolroom they were too foreign, at home they were too American. Even the immigrant father who compromised most willingly in adjusting his outside affairs to the realities that surrounded him insisted that family life, at least, should retain the pattern that he had known as a boy. Language, religion, customs and parental authority were not to be modified simply because the home had been moved four or five thousand miles to the westward. When the son and the daughter refused to conform, their action was considered a rebellion of ungrateful children for whom so many advantages had been provided. The gap between the two generations was widened and the family spirit was embittered by repeated misunderstanding. How to inhabit two worlds at the same time was the problem of the second generation.

That problem was solved by escape. As soon as he was free economically, an independence that usually came several years before he was free legally, the son struck out for himself. He wanted to forget everything: the foreign language that left an unmistakable trace in his English speech, the religion that continually recalled childhood struggles, the family customs that should have been the happiest of all memories. He wanted to be away from all physical reminders of early days, in an environment so different, so American, that all associates naturally assumed that he was as American as they. This picture has been deliberately overdrawn, but who will deny that the second generation wanted to forget, and even when the ties of family affection were strong, wanted to lose as many of the evidences of foreign origin as they could shuffle off?

Most easy to lose was that which, if retained, might have meant the most to the civilization of the American republic. The immigrant brought with him European culture. This does not mean that the man who wielded the pickaxe was really a Michael Angelo or that the one who took to house painting was in fact an unrecognized Rembrandt. They brought a popular though uncritical appreciation of art and music; they felt at home in an environment where such aspects of culture were taken for granted and (what is not to be overlooked in any consideration of the development of American life) they did not subscribe to the prevailing American sentiment that it was not quite moral for a strong, able-bodied man to earn his living by playing a fiddle.

If they did not come in loaded down with culture, at least they were plentifully supplied with the seeds of culture that, scattered in a fertile soil, could flourish mightily.

The soil was not fertile. Americans of the nineteenth century were not entirely unfriendly to a little art now and then if it were limited to the front parlor and restricted to the women. Even a man might play a little, sing a little and paint a little if he did it in a straightforward, wholesome way and for relaxation only. But these foreigners, most of whom had been in Paris and set up what they called a studio where they dawdled away the hours, day and night, were not to be trusted.

Let them earn their living by doing a man's work instead of singing arias at the meetings of the woman's club in the middle of the afternoon or giving piano lessons to the young girls, thereby taking away the source of livelihood from the village spinster who also gave lessons and willingly sang for nothing. The second generation was entirely aware of the contempt in which such activities were held and they hastened to prove that they knew nothing about casts, symphonies or canvas. Nothing was more Yankee than a Yankeeized person of foreign descent.

The leaders among the natives proclaimed loudly: It is wonderful how these young people catch the spirit of American institutions. The leaders among the foreign-born sighed and said to themselves: This apostasy means nothing good. It is not good for the sons and daughters who give up a heritage richer than farm acres and city lots; it is not good for this uncouth pioneer nation which has spent its time chopping down trees and rolling stones and has never learned how the genius of one might brighten the life of many and satisfy some human longings that corn bread and apple pie can never appease. Blind, stupid America, they said, the one nation of the globe which has had offered to it the rich gifts that every people of Europe brought and laid at its feet and it spurned them all. The immigrants, perhaps, may be excused. Their thoughts and efforts were taken up with material cares and they were naturally under some suspicion. But nothing can absolve the traitors of the second generation who deliberately threw away what had been preserved in the home. When they are gone all the hope will be lost and the immigration of the nineteenth century will have contributed nothing to the development of America but what came out of the strong muscles of a few million patient plodders.

These pessimists were wrong. All has not been lost. After the second generation comes the third and with the third appears a new force and a new opportunity which, if recognized in time, can not only do a good job of salvaging but probably can accomplish more than either the first or the second could ever have achieved.

Anyone who has the courage to codify the laws of history must include what can be designated "the principle of third generation interest." The principle is applicable in all fields of historical study. It explains the recurrence of movements that seemingly are dead; it is a factor that should be kept in mind particularly in literary or cultural history; it makes it possible for the present to know something about the future.

The theory is derived from the almost universal phenomenon that what the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.

The theory is derived from the almost universal phenomenon that what the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember. The tendency might be illustrated by a hundred examples. The case of the Civil War may be cited. The Southerners who survived the four years of that struggle never forgot. In politics and in conversation the "lost cause" was an endless theme. Those who listened became weary and the sons of the Confederate veterans were among them. That second generation made little effort to justify the action of their fathers. Their expressed opinion was that, after all, the result was inevitable and undoubtedly for the best. These sons went North and won success in every field of business and in every branch of learning. But now the grandsons of the Confederates rule in the place of the sons and there is no apologizing for the events of 1861; instead there is a belligerency that asserts the moral and constitutional justice of their grandfathers' policy. The South has been revived. Its history is taught with a fervid patriotism in the universities and schools.

Recently there has been formed the Southern Historical Association as an evidence of the growing interest. The great novel of the Civil War and Reconstruction era was not written by one who had participated in the events or witnessed the scenes. It did not come from the pen of one who had listened to a father's reminiscences.

Gone with the Wind was written by a granddaughter of the Confederacy, in the year 1936, approximately sixty years after the period with which it dealt had come to an end.

Immigration not only has its history, it has its historiography. The writing of descriptions of that great epic movement began almost as early as the movement itself. Every immigrant letter written from new shores was history, very personal and very uncritical. Every sheaf of reminiscences written by one of the participants in his later years was also history, a little more uncritical. There was much to be recounted and since sons would not listen the grayheaded participants got together and, organized as pioneer societies, they told one another of the glorious deeds that they had seen and sometimes performed and listened to the reading of the obituaries of the giants that had fallen. When the last of them had joined his ancestors the pioneer society automatically disbanded leaving behind as the first chapter of immigrant historiography a conglomerate mass of literature, much and often most of it useless. All of it seemed useless to the son who cleared out his father's desk and he resolved not to waste any of his time on such pointless pursuits.

As a broad generalization it may be said that the second generation is not interested in and does not write any history. That is just another aspect of their policy of forgetting. Then, however, appears the "third generation." They have no reason to feel any inferiority when they look about them. They are American born. Their speech is the same as that of those with whom they associate. Their material wealth is the average possession of the typical citizen. When anyone speaks to him about immigrants he always makes it clear that he has in mind the more recent hordes that have been pouring through the gates and any suggestion that the onrush should be stemmed is usually prefaced with the remark that recent immigrants are not so desirable as the pioneers that arrived in earlier times.

It is in an attitude of pride that the substantial landowner or merchant looks about him and says: "This prosperity is our achievement, that of myself and of my fathers; it is a sign of the hardy stock from which we have sprung; who were they and why did they come?" And so their curiosity is projected back into the family beginnings. Those who are acquainted with the universities of the Middle West, where a large proportion of the students are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the nineteenth century immigrants can sense this attitude of inquiry and can not escape the feeling of pride in which they study the history and culture of the nations from which their ancestors came.

To show how universal this spirit has been we can retrace some periodic resurgences of national spirit and relate them to the time of immigration. There were Irishmen in America before the Revolution but there is no reason to question the generalization that until 1840 two-thirds of the emigrants from Ireland were the so-called Scotch-Irish. In the 1830's their influx was particularly large; in fact, the great proportion of Ulstermen who came to America arrived in the course of that decade. Sixty years later (at the time of the third generation) a renaissance of Scotch-Irish sentiment in the United States was strikingly apparent. Local societies were formed that met in monthly or quarterly conclave to sing the praises of their forebears and to glory in the achievements of the Presbyterian Church.

Beginning in 1889 and continuing for more than a decade representatives of these societies met in an annual national meeting called a "Scotch-Irish Congress." Then the movement lost its impetus. Leaders died or took up other activities; members refrained from paying dues; attendance at sessions dwindled. After 1903 no more Scotch-Irish congresses were held.

We can pass to another example. The large German immigration reached its crest in the late 1840's and early 1850's, A little over half a century later, in the first decade of the twentieth century, a breeze of historical interest stirred the German-American community. One of the number was moved to offer a prize for the best historical discussion of the contribution of the German element to American life. Not only the prize-winning work (the well-known volume by A.B. Faust), but many of the manuscripts that had been submitted in the competition were published, forming a library of German-American activity in many fields. Several local and state historical societies were formed and the study of German literature in universities and schools enjoyed an amazing popularity that later observers could ascribe only to the propaganda of an intriguing nation. The Theodore Roosevelt Professorship established at the University of Berlin in 1907 was an expression of the same revival. The war naturally put an end to this activity and obscured much of the valuable work that the investigators had performed.

The auspices under which we have met this evening suggest the next example to be cited. The large Scandinavian immigration began in the 1850's and after the interruption of the Civil War reached its culmination in the 1880's. True to expectations we find that at present the most lively interest in history of this nature is exhibited in Scandinavian circles in America. Among Scandinavians, Norwegians were pioneers and in historical research they are also a step in advance. The Swedes came a little later and an intelligent prophet of that period looking forward to the cultural development of the nationality in their new home would have said: "About 1930 a historical society will be formed." It was. In June, 1930, the Augustana Historical Society was organized among the members of the Augustana Synod which so faithfully represents the more than a million people of Swedish descent who are citizens of the American republic. And now, having consumed half of the time allotted me in an introduction which is half of the paper, I come to the topic of the evening, a subject which will be interpreted in the light of the foregoing remarks. It reads: The problem of the third generation immigrant.

As problems go it is not one to cause worry or to be shunned. It has none of the bitterness or heart-breaking features of its predecessors. It is welcome. In summary form it may be stated as follows: Whenever any immigrant group reaches the third generation stage in its development a spontaneous and almost irresistible impulse arises which forces the thoughts of many people of different professions, different positions in life and different points of view to interest themselves in that one factor which they have in common: heritage-the heritage of blood.

The problem is: how can this impulse be organized and directed so that the results growing therefrom will be worthy of the high instincts from which it has sprung and a dignified tribute to the pioneers and at the same time be a contribution to the history of the United States which has received all Europeans on a basis of equality and which should record their achievements in the same spirit of impartiality.

It is hardly necessary for me to remind this gathering that the Swedish stock in America is fast approaching the third generation stage.

During the decade of the eighties their coming reached its height in numbers. The census of 1930 records that of the persons born in Sweden giving the date of their arrival in the country fifty-two percent landed before 1900— and this in spite of the great mortality that the newcomers of that period have suffered. The children that crowd the Sunday school rooms of the churches of this Synod it is well known are the grandsons and granddaughters of the pioneers that built the churches; grandsons and granddaughters, I am also sure, are present in increasing numbers in the student body of this college which those same pioneers at the cost of many sacrifices, built for the sake of those who were to come after them.

Among the leaders of this society are men of the first generation and of the second generation but they are the proverbial exception, or it may be better to say they are third generation in spirit. No matter how active they are in leadership the organization can succeed only if the grandchildren of the pioneers will follow.

We will assume that this will be the case; that the membership of the Augustana Historical Society will continue to increase in numbers, that the members will continue to pay their dues, that a few patrons will arise to sponsor special enterprises in research and publication. It is not my object to enlighten you on how to bring about this happy condition. We will assume that many members will carry on their own investigations, that now and then an expert can be subsidized to probe deeply into some vital aspects of Swedish-American history and that the publications will continue to be of the high standard that has already been established. My suggestions will be of a different nature and will center about another set of questions: what fields shall be investigated? Where shall the emphasis be put in research and publication? What should be the attitude in which the past, which belongs not only to the Swedes but also to the Americans, should be approached? In attempting an answer I speak with no authority except that which comes from several years of delving into the records of most of the pioneer and historical societies of America.

Everyone accepts the premise that self-laudation is not the end in view. Nevertheless it will be hard to keep out because of the human characteristic of speaking nothing but good of the men who labored hard and have now disappeared from the earthly stage. At the first meeting of the Scotch-Irish Congress the speakers presented one paper after the other which dealt with the achievements of the Ulsterman at home and abroad, during all ages and in all spheres of human effort. Finally one of the delegates arose and made a cutting remark that only a Scotch-Irishman would dare to make. While listening to the programs, he said, he had been asking himself the question: "What on earth have the rest of creation been doing for the last eighteen hundred years?" That question should be in the mind of every writer who is tempted to generalize on the contribution of ethnic groups to the development of American life.      

If not to the laudation of great men to what activities should the efforts of the society be directed? Let that question first be approached by a calm realization of the fact that the society will not live forever. The time will come when membership will dwindle, when promising subjects for research will be few in number and of little popular interest. That has been the life-course of every organization of this nature.

The constituency becomes gradually thinned out as the third generation merges into the fourth and the fourth shades off into the fifth. Even societies with substantial endowments have in their later years found it difficult to continue to produce work of high scholarly quality. The final judgment rendered regarding the success or failure of this society as of others will rest upon the answer given to two pertinent inquiries: Did they, when the time was appropriate, write the history of the special group with whom they were concerned on broad impartial lines, and did they make a permanent contribution to the meaning of American history at large? A few proposals by the following of which a satisfactory reply can be given to both of those questions are now in order.

First of all let it be remembered that the history of any immigrant stock in America is far broader than the history of the particular religious organization that was predominant in the number of communicants that it could claim. The neglect of that fact was the first error made by historical writers in America. When they set out to write the story of the settlement of Englishmen in New England they centered it all about the migration of the Puritan church and neglected a hundred other factors that surrounded the coming and establishment of the colonies on that coast, In recent years some correction has been made but the traditional emphasis has been so great that in spite of the labors of many scholars and the resources of a dozen secular institutions, the history of New England is still less satisfactory than that of any other section of the older part of the country. From such a false start may the Augustana Historical Society be preserved!

Religion must certainly be a leading theme in the program. The church was the first, the most important and the most significant institution that the immigrants established. Its policies reacted upon every other phase of their existence but in turn and, in fact, first, those other phases of their existence established the conditions under which the church was planted and grew. If one should study the agriculture, the system of land purchase, the distribution of population, the state of the roads, the circulation of books and newspapers, the development of amusements he would be in a better position to appraise the situation that the church did occupy in the life of every community. In Mr. Rölvaag's stirring novel Giants in the Earth no episode is presented with more effect than that which recounts the coming of the clergyman and the effect is produced not by the description of the man and his mission.

It is the background of dull, material routine that has preceded that gives to the brief chapter its epic quality. History had been made before the clergyman and the church appeared and to be understood they must be placed in their proper order in the sequence of events.

Moreover, for an understanding of religious development to the formation of those churches that broke with the faith of the old country relatively more attention should be given than the number of their communicants would warrant. In no other experience was the psychology of the immigrant more clearly reflected. When they said that they passed from the old world to the new many of them meant that the world should be new in all respects. When they gave up allegiance to a government it was easy to give up allegiance to a church. The secessions from the Lutheran faith can be dealt with conveniently, quickly and without embarrassment by ascribing them to the successful methods of proselyting that the well-financed American home missionary societies employed. But the immigrant met the proselyter halfway-perhaps more than halfway—and when one knows what was going on in the mind of the person who did break away from his mother church it will be easier to understand the actions of some of those who did not break away but certainly caused frictions within the church to which they remained true and created situations that could not have arisen in the old Swedish parish from which they had recently come.

Even the study of politics is not entirely foreign to an organization which has chosen as its mission the history of the Augustana Synod. The clergymen of that Synod like the clergymen of any other religious body in the republic had no intention of destroying the fundamental separation of Church and State which the fathers of the constitution had ordained, but how they itched to go into politics! How they lived to find in every Sunday's text some idea that could be applied to the decision of that burning political issue that the men in the audience had been discussing before the services had begun and which they would surely begin to discuss again as soon as the benediction had been pronounced.

There is much evidence to suggest that the immigrant church had a great influence in determining the way in which the naturalized citizen would cast his vote. But not a single study has been made of church influence in any election and the results of such a study would throw as much light upon the status of the church as it would upon the political history of that election.

The church had some competitors in the matter of interest, affection and usefulness. Whatever the difficulties that attended the founding of the pioneer congregation, that of inducing the immigrant to join was hardly existent. The immigrant was an inveterate joiner-a habit which was, without question, the result of his feeling of lonesomeness. In Europe the individual was born into many groups that he had to join in America and he entered into them rather light-heartedly hoping that from all he would derive the satisfaction that no single one could yield. When some energetic spirit said to him: Come and join this fraternal organization, he went; when the suggestion of a singing society was broached he fell in with the plan; when someone undertook to line up a shooting corps he took down his gun and practiced marksmanship. All of these pursuits weakened somewhat the hold of the church and the minister was led to adopt an uncompromising attitude toward amusements that otherwise would have been held both innocent and useful. Therefore, it can be said that without a knowledge of the social environment the policy of the church can not be understood.

If these suggestions should be followed, the product would be a history of the Swedes in America that no one could accuse of being tainted with partiality. Perhaps not all the passages would be read with a glow of pride but there would be no humiliation and the pride in the achievement of what no other ethnic group in America has been willing to do would soon overcome regrets that arose out of what truth made it necessary to say. In such an accomplishment the Augustana Historical Society would achieve all that its founders had hoped for it in the field of religious history and the incidental products would give to the world a true and inspiring picture of what the Swedish pioneers had done in the task of subduing the primitive American wilderness.

Although a historical society has justified its existence when it has faithfully recorded the experiences and achievements of the particular element in the population or the particular region in the country that it was created to serve, still unless the story that is written from these records can be made to fit in as one chapter in the larger volume that is called American history the charge of antiquarianism can hardly be escaped. Men of insight who understand that it is the ultimate fate of any national group to be amalgamated into the composite American race will be reconciled to the thought that their historical activities will in time be merged with the activities of other societies of the same nature and finally with the main line of American historiography itself. How such a merging may profoundly influence the course of all national historical writing is illustrated by reference to that one group which is the most mature among the population minorities.

The Scotch-Irish Congress during the fourteen years of its existence published ten volumes of Proceedings. A study of the contents of these volumes reveals the widening nature of the interests growing out of the researches. The laudatory character of the contributions to the first publication has been mentioned. Such papers are not entirely absent from the last volume but there also appear titles such as these: "Paths and Roads of our Forefathers," "The Colonial Defenses of Franklin County, " "German Life and Thought in a Scotch-Irish Settlement," substantial contributions to the pioneer history of the environment in which the group developed.

It is well known that during the decade of the 1890's the character of American historical writing changed. A new emphasis appeared. Scholars looked beyond the older settlements ranged along the seaboard into the communities in the back country. A word that every schoolboy can now explain crept into the textbooks. This word and this theory now almost dominate every page in the volume. The word is "frontier" and the theory is the "frontier interpretation of American history." Older students wise in the way of the classroom have been known to pass on to the younger students this piece of practical advice: "In any examination in American history if you don't know the answer tie it up with the development of the frontier."

This new emphasis is universally credited to Professor Frederick J. Turner. However, Turner or no Turner the frontier hypothesis was bound to come and to appear in the very decade during which he wrote his famous essay. In fact, the hypothesis may be distilled from the conglomerate mass of information and theory jumbled together in the ten volumes of Scotch-Irish proceedings. It is doubtful whether the pronouncement of one man, no matter how brilliant, could have turned the course of historical writing unless it were already veering in that direction. It is quite possible that Turner who wrote in 1893 drew upon the frontier interest that the Scotch- Irish were arousing by their studies of the part that the Ulstermen took in the movement of settlement into the West. The interest that they awakened united with the scholars that Professor Turner trained to give to American history its new and significant social interpretation.

The frontier doctrine in its original narrow statement has been overdone. We are beginning to see that the Mississippi Valley was for fifty years the frontier of Europe as well as of the eastern states and that it reacted upon England, Germany and Scandinavia with a force comparable to that which it exerted upon Atlantic America. Some historians with the orthodox professional training have recognized this fact and they are attempting, in a rather clumsy way, to analyze the operation of these influences. There is, however, one omission in their training. They know nothing about the hundreds of immigrant communities in America that formed the human connecting link between the old world and the new, nothing about the millions of personal contacts that brought humble public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic so close together.

It can be assumed too readily that the history of migration cannot be anything but a desirable influence. That is not necessarily the case. Prejudice and super-nationalism may be the product.

The next stage in American historical writing will concern itself with this widened outlook. Herein lies not only the great opportunity but also the great obligation of the third generation historical activity. It alone can provide the atmosphere; it alone can uncover the sources; it alone can interpret the mentality of the millions of persons who had not entirely ceased to be Europeans and had not yet become accepted Americans. The problem of the third generation immigrant is to undertake the job that has been assigned and to perform it well.

The close of this discourse may very properly be a warning. It can be assumed too readily that the history of migration cannot be anything but a desirable influence. That is not necessarily the case. Prejudice and super-nationalism may be the product. Societies organized with the laudable intention of commemorating the deeds of which any people should be proud may fall into the hands of those who will use them for instruments of propaganda. Instead of a world covered with a network of associations which will foster an appreciation of the best that each nation has produced, we may find international societies for the promotion of hatred and intolerance. Historians must recognize an obligation to guide the national curiosity to know the past along those lines which will serve the good of all.

If told as it transpired, the epic of migration can add an ideal to take the place of one of the many that recent decades have shattered. For it is a simple story of how troubled men, by courage and action, overcame their difficulties, and how people of different tongues and varied culture have managed to live together in peace.

—  M. L. HANSEN