Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.Martin, John Alexander
History
Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.
Martin, John Alexander
Kansas
We are interested now, however, in the Scandinavian people in America,
and not those remaining on the Peninsula. The census of 1880 shows that
there are 440,262 Scandinavians—Swedes, Norwegians and Danes—in the
United States, and of these 194,337 are Swedes. The census of Kansas
also reveals the fact that 11,207 of our citizens are of Swedish birth.
This county of McPherson has within its limits the largest number, or
2,117; Saline county has 1,636; and Riley, Osage, Republic and Clay have
each over 500 citizens of Swedish birth within their limits. That they
make good citizens is a fact universally acknowledged. Wherever they
have settled, improvement and prosperity abound, and schools and
churches multiply. They are, too, thorough Americans. They do not want
to go back to the bleak, snow-clad hills and the vast forests of their
native land, nor do they bring with them to this country that distrust
of rulers and of law which arrays them against our government as if it
was a natural enemy. They do not figure largely in politics; they prefer
to attend to more material and personal concerns—building homes,
conducting business and manufacturing industries, establishing schools
for their children, erecting churches, and accumulating property. They
do not, however, neglect the duties and responsibilities of the
citizenship they have assumed; they study to discharge these, not as
aliens, but in the true spirit of American individuality and patriotism.
Hence, in exchanging the rocks and snows of Sweden for the soil and
sunshine of Kansas, our Swedish citizens have, as I have said, benefited
not only themselves, but the young State with whose fortunes they have
linked their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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