Februakt 18, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



153 



are joyous on those farms after having lived 

 some years in tlie hustle of our Twin Cities. 

 The Finns found their own environment by 

 accident." 



The German-Eussians also by accident went 

 to the open plains of the Dakotas, and there 

 in areas so like their Eussian farms they have 

 become contented and many are wealthy farm- 

 ers. The chief adjustment they had to make 

 was to larger farms, and American citizenship 

 and language. While around many of the ex- 

 tensive mines and plants of our fundamental 

 industries the Slavic-Eussians are struggling 

 to adjust themselves from the open^ir life of 

 Eussian farms to the intense breathless life of 

 the industrial gang. Many of those Slavs have 

 been as misplaced as were the Holland-Dutch. 

 With expert care and study we put our im- 

 ported plants and animals in the areas to 

 which they are best adapted, but we allow the 

 peoples coming to us to go where chance or 

 material profit for the moment leads them. 



The results of anthrojxjlogical and environ- 

 mental researches in Europe and America 

 oould be so popularized as to become impor- 

 tant factors in the matter of immigrant dis- 

 tribution, and so assist in checking the grow- 

 ing and fatal disease of urbanization in Amer- 

 ica. 



The problem of the assimilation of our im- 

 migrant peoples has become of such impor- 

 tance in the last few years that it has at- 

 tracted nation-wide attention and started a 

 nation-wide movement known as Americaniza- 

 tion. It is in this field of national endeavor 

 that anthropology has an opportunity for 

 paramount service to our nation. I wish in 

 discussing this point to bring to you not 

 simply a theory of what might be done but to 

 tell you what actually has been done along this 

 line in the University of Minnesota. Two 

 years ago I presented a paper before this sec- 

 tion in Baltimore on the plan then recently 

 passed at the University of Minnesota to at- 

 tempt to make a practical application of the 

 science of anthropology to the great Ameri- 



9 ' ' The Finn in America, ' ' by Eugene "Van 

 Oeef. Eeproduced from Bulletin of The Ameri- 

 can Geographical Society, 1918. 



canization problem about which the whole na- 

 tion was so much concerned and yet at the 

 same time about which it was so much be- 

 wildered as to practical methods of approach. 

 The Americanization Training Course has 

 now been established at the University of 

 Minnesota for more than two years. Its ob- 

 ject is the training of Americanization lead- 

 ers to hasten the assimilation of the various 

 peoples in America toward the highest com- 

 mon standards and ideals of America practic- 

 able for that generation. The course is 

 founded on our anthropology courses which 

 have been developing in our university for 

 fourteen years. Those courses consisted not 

 only of the usual foundation courses on the 

 development of man, races and culture, but of 

 courses dealing with modern anthropological 

 problems especially those of vital importance 

 to our immigrant nation. They have dealt 

 with the peoples who have come and who are 

 coming to America as immigrants, and with 

 the negroes who came as slaves. They also 

 dealt with the resulting peoples in America 

 due to amalgamation and adjustment, and 

 those psychic results so essentially American 

 that we called them " Americanisms." On the 

 establishment of the training course these 

 courses were emphasized and developed, and 

 on top of them we developed professional 

 courses on the technique, the method, and the 

 organization of Americanization work, also 

 technical courses on the principles of adult 

 elementary education, the adult elementary 

 learning process, and the adult elementary 

 teaching process, and also such practical field 

 courses as supervised work with foreign peo- 

 ples in homes, residence communities, indus- 

 trial plants, public schools, etc. There have 

 been diiSculties, since we were so largely in an 

 untried field. Some of the courses of neces- 

 sity were at first only experimental. Instruct- 

 ors had not always all the training we might 

 have wished. But the contact with workers 

 in the same field, especially as we have been 

 able to bring them in during our summer ses- 

 sions, when they have come as instructors and 

 students from New York, California, and cen- 



