436 AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES. 



The emigration from Scandinavia has been so great for the 

 last twenty-five years, and has added so much to the growth and 

 prosperity of Iowa, Minnesota and &quot;Wisconsin, and in a lesser 

 degree to other Western States, that their example in promot 

 ing it may profitably be imitated by any State which aims to 

 develop itself socially and industrially, by adding to its num 

 bers a thrifty, home-building population. From the Scandi 

 navian population, also, the suffrages of the whole people are 

 advancing men into public positions. The State University of 

 Wisconsin has its .Norwegian Professor, and lest our next Presi 

 dent should be descended from Odin s royal line, it behooves 

 us to know how much more or less an American he would be in 

 consequence. 



The civil and political history of the Western States illus 

 trates the &quot; tendency to homogeneousness in all the modes of a 

 civilization which moves in an east and west direction, through 

 the same belt of climate.&quot; If the problem of Scandinavian 

 influence had not already been solved in the commingling of 

 their blood and spirit into English character, we might still 

 trust that tendency while we watch their conquest of the north 

 ern lands by the same resistless energy which made them mas 

 ters of the northern seas. This tendency doubtless helps 

 greatly in the assimilation of all the European nationalities 

 that come to us, but in the Northmen kindred and family traits 

 identify them at once with us and our institutions. In response 

 to a toast, &quot;To the Norwegian patriot and musician,&quot; Oie Bull 

 replied, &quot;When I am in America I am a Norwegian; in Norway 

 I am always an American.&quot; 



It is not from Germany but from Scandinavia that the En 

 glish and American people have derived those infusions of 

 strength and enterprise, and that spirit of dominion and col 

 onization which have carried the sentiments of civil, political 

 and religious liberty, the principles of representative legisla 

 tion, trial by jury, security of property and the freedom of the 

 press, to the remotest parts of the earth. 



Throughout Scandinavia, in the earliest times, the peasantry, 

 i. e. the people constituted the supreme power, and the &quot;All 

 Thing,&quot; or Diet, transformed their simple customs into laws. 

 A peasant was not only an agricultor, but the free-born inheritor 

 of rights in the soil, who became eligible through superiority of 



