per Mississippi Valley there
were a substantial number of Bohemians. In Nebraska they comprise nine
per cent of the foreign born population, in Oklahoma seven per cent,
and in Texas over six per cent. They began migrating in the turbulent
forties. They were nearly all of the peasant class, neat, industrious
and intelligent, and they usually settled in colonies where they
retained their native tongue and customs. They were opposed to
slavery and many enlisted in the Union cause.

Among the Polish immigrants who came to America before 1870, many
settled on farms in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and other States. They
proved much more clannish than the Bohemians and more reluctant to
conform to American customs.

Many farms in the Northwest are occupied by Finns, of whom there were
in 1910 over two hundred thousand in the United States. They are a
Tatar race, with a copious sprinkling of Swedish blood. Illiteracy is
rare among them. They are eager patrons of night schools and libraries
and have a flourishing college near Duluth. 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,