[328] _Statesman's Year Book, 1900_, 1048.
[329] _Ibid._, 1062; _Folkebladet_, Feb. 5, 1896.
Such statistics are certainly ominous, whatever the allowance which should be made for peculiar social conditions in Europe, which make the begetting of children after betrothal and before actual wedlock a less heinous offence against good order and morality than in America. But over against these startling figures stands the fact that it does not seem to be harder to maintain order and decency in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, or in the Scandinavian wards of Chicago, than it is in Detroit or Boston, or in the other alien quarters of Chicago itself. Nor does an inspection of the court and police records of cities of the Northwest for crimes and offences against decency, or against women, give cause for any special alarm for the future morality of the Scandinavians of that section.
For a safe and conclusive estimate of the contributions made by the Scandinavian element to the delinquent and defective classes of society, no very complete or satisfactory data are at present to be had. A detailed study of the statistics of these classes in Wisconsin and Minnesota warrants the judgment that the immigrants from Northern Europe, and their immediate descendants, have a much smaller percentage of paupers and criminals and a much larger percentage of insane, than do either the Germans or the Irish, the two other alien elements which approach the Scandinavians in importance in those States.[330] But these statistics are at best unconvincing, because they are acknowledgedly incomplete, and because in them little attempt is made to distinguish between the children of American descent and those born of immigrant parents in America.
[330] A discussion of these statistics for 1885-1890 is given in _The Forum_, XIV, 103. The reports of the superintendents of some of the institutions give more or less of the history of each case. See Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, II, 1-23.
The experts working out the interpretation of the results of the Twelfth Census (1900) have made distinct progress towards a fair comparative judgment in matters relating to social classes and conditions. John Koren, for example, the son of the veteran Norwegian Lutheran pastor, the Rev. V. Koren, and an investigator and writer of unusual weight, points out that the insane in hospitals are at least ten years of age, while there are few children under fifteen among the immigrants as compared with the number under that age among the native whites, and he accordingly concludes that "Of the whites at least 10 years of age in the general population of the United States in 1900, 80.5% were native and 19.5% were foreign-born; while of the white insane of known nativity enumerated in hospitals on December 31, 1903, 65.7% were native and 34.3% were foreign-born. Relatively, therefore, the insane are more numerous among the foreign born whites than among the native."[331] How much more convincing is such a cautious and careful estimate than the sweeping generalizations of another recent writer: "Roughly speaking, the foreigners furnish more than twice as many criminals, two and one-third times as many insane, and three times as many paupers as the native element."[332]