80 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



however, they are retained after the community passes the 

 frontier stage, the settlers are undesirable. As soon, however, as 

 the immigrants from northwestern Europe passed that stage, 

 they commenced imitating American customs. During the 

 pioneer days any make-shift for a house had to be satisfactory. 

 Now substantial houses are found almost everywhere. The 

 early settlers had to work excessively hard to attain success. 

 With the increase of prosperity they have ceased to do this. A 

 very influential reason that the Germans, Scandinavians, and 

 certain minor groups of foreigners outdistanced the natives was 

 that among the former the women and children did a great deal 

 of outdoor labor. The generation born in this country do not 

 put the women and children in the fields. Thus in general the 

 earlier immigrants are conforming to American standards. 



Foreigners on the farms are easily assimilated. The main 

 factor against assimilation is religion. This statement does not, 

 of course, apply to the English-speaking peoples who belong in 

 general to the same church as the natives. Other nationalities 

 couple their language very closely with their forms of worship. 

 They therefore try to maintain schools in their own language. 

 Such attempts fail because of the preference on the part of the 

 young for the English schools and also because a large number 

 of the older people realize the paramount importance of Eng- 

 lish. Attempts were made by the conservatives to introduce 

 their languages into the public schools. With the exception of 

 Ohio and Pennsylvania where the Germans succeeded in intro- 

 ducing German such efforts have been failures everywhere. In 

 the schools these peoples rank high. In fact the literacy of the 

 Scandinavian immigrant has been higher than that of the North- 

 erners as a whole. Their inclination is indicated by the large 

 number of Germans and Scandinavians who engage in educa- 

 tional work. To obtain public land they had to become nat- 

 uralized. Later the questions of local government naturally 

 aroused interest in politics. The English on account of their 

 previous acquaintance with our political customs excelled. The 

 others, however, were also used to fairly democratic institutions 

 so that they were not at such a great disadvantage. But they 

 have been rather indifferent in this respect except where they 

 have composed practically the entire population and therefore 



