A leader of the Women's Organization, North Dakota Council of Defense, made the following statement:
The Red Cross work, food-conservation work, and child-welfare work are organized in every county, a wide-awake woman being chosen as county head. Great difficulty is experienced in reaching the foreigner. A large number of them, especially women, do not understand English, and do not know enough about the country, its traditions, and spirit. Aside from remaining foreigners, they are in many cases unbelievably ignorant. For instance, the organization undertook a baby census, which included weighing the babies. The baby of a German housewife was underweight--that is, below normal. When its mother learned of this she began to cry hysterically. After the other people succeeded in quieting her she expressed the fear that the American government would kill her baby for being below normal weight.
The statistical data on parochial and other private schools in the state of Minnesota for 1918, compiled by the Department of Public Instruction, are as follows:
ENROLLMENT AND LANGUAGE USED IN PAROCHIAL AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN MINNESOTA, 1918 ============================================================= Number of parochial and private schools 307 Number of pupils enrolled 38,853 Number of teachers 1,359 Number of schools using English only 94 Number of bilingual schools in which the teaching is in English and German 195 English and Bohemian 1 English and Dutch 1 English and French 4 English and Norwegian 1 English and Polish 10 English and Danish 1 ___ Total 213 =============================================================
The Isanti County school superintendent reports for 1915-16:[27]
The poorest schools in the county are in communities where there are private schools in connection with a church. The children attend these for years at a time, and when they return to the public schools find themselves behind their former companions. We wish arrangements might be made so that these schools could not teach the branches unless the teachers were as well equipped as the public-school teachers and that the children could be sent to them only at the confirmation age for two years.
The Martin County superintendent reports:[28]