SETTLEMENT AND COLONIZATION IN GREAT LAKES STATES mA 
The native-born city people who go to the cut-over country are 
usually farmers’ sons and daughters who left the farm for the city to 
make their fortunes, and having had a’ sample of both, have de- 
cided that, after all, they will prosper better in the country. Such 
people usually shrink from returning to their old homes and starting 
in as laborers and tenants. They therefore easily accept the idea of a 
farm of their own in the cut-over country. With these people, too, 
there is a wide range in quality. Some of them are fagged-out and 
almost without real hope. Others are full of fresh hope and fighting 
spirit. They also vary in their knowledge of farming. Among them 
are always some who know practically nothing about farming. It is 
the almost unqualified testimony of all land companies that very few 
of this kind succeed. Many land companies will not sell to them. 
Foreigners who become settlers in this region more often come out 
of mining than any other industry. By nationalities, they rank 
roughly as follows: Finns, Poles, Scandinavians (Swedes, Nor- 
wegians, and Danes), Germans, Slovaks and Croats, Bohemians, 
Dutch and Belgians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Italians, etc. The 
Finns are most numerous in Minnesota and the northern peninsula of 
Michigan, the Poles in Wisconsin and the southern peninsula of 
Michigan. Most of these foreigners lived or worked on farms in 
Europe, although there are notable examples of foreigners who came 
out of European city industries. These have generally fared about 
as poorly at the start as did the Pilgrim Fathers in New England. 
Experience of the projects studied tends to show that those who 
come directly from farms usually insist upon growing corn or wheat 
and doing other things suited to agriculture where they came from, 
but not adapted to conditions in the new region. They often bring 
horses and heavy machinery with them which they will not be able 
to use for several years. Sometimes they bring several head of cattle 
and find they can not carry them through the first winter. Frequently 
they want to start with too large an investment in buildings. Such 
men are usually hard to advise. They think they know more about 
farming than the land companies, when as a matter of fact they were 
in many cases only indifferent farmers where they came from. A 
principal defect of many of these farmers is that they can not organ- 
ize and lay out their work to advantage. In many cases their farm 
experience has not included the clearing and gradual subduing of 
land to farming. Finally, their standard of living may be higher 
than pioneer farming will afford, or it may not be on the self-sufficing 
basis so necessary in a new country. 
City settlers of American birth are not so hard to advise, but they 
are usually less apt in handling horses and tools and less able and less 
willing to do a hard day’s work. ‘These settlers are likely to be poor 
managers.. Too many of them are persons with no farm experience 
who have entirely unreal notions of the requirements of success under 
pioneer farming conditions. They have read idealized articles in 
magazines portraying the possibilities of making a quick fortune 
from highly intensive farming. 
Most foreign-born settlers can be depended upon to endure greater 
hardships and more severe exertion, and to be content with slower 
progress than the native born. They are therefore more likely to stay 
with their undertakings under severely unfavorable conditions than 
