THE OCCUPATIOX OF THE LAND 177 



modern equipment, schools, churches, bank credit 

 and hold otHce quite without distinction of race. 

 They are situated in the southernmost tier of coun- 

 ties, close to the boundarj- of Indiana, in one of the 

 oldest and best-developed agricultural counties of 

 Michigan. 



The impression one receives from a study of the 

 settlement of Michigan, as of other American states, 

 is primarily of a group of communities whose mem- 

 bers are associated together by a common origin, by 

 religious afliliations, or by a common language and 

 national relationship. Besides the large racial ele- 

 ments already noted, there are in rural ]\Iichigan 

 communities formerly Belgian, Lithuanian, Polish, 

 Croatian, Eussian, English and Scottish in nation- 

 ality. With the non-English-speaking stocks here 

 represented, the problem of assimilating them into 

 common American life has not been solved. Studies 

 conducted by Gilbert Brown of the Department 

 of Psychology in the Northern State Normal 

 School indicate how completely isolated, socially and 

 intellectually, many of these rural enclaves have 

 remained to the present time. For the purposes of 

 this investigation Brown employed the rural census 

 blank used by the College of Agriculture of the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin. The collation of the informa- 

 tion so obtained brought out such facts as the fol- 

 lowing : In one community of ten families including 

 seventy-eight persons, of whom thirty-three were 

 born in Finland, two in Sweden, and forty-three in 

 the United States (all the parents being born in 



