CHAPTER X. SOCIAL RELATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS While the normal unit in Scandinavian immigration is the family, a considerable proportion of the immigrants has consisted of young, unmarried men and women. Not infrequently the young man left behind him a sweetheart who followed a little later when a solid foundation was laid for the prospective family; or perchance, if sufficiently prosperous, he went back at some Christmastide to marry her and bring her to America. In any case, the farm meant a home, and the marriage back of it was generally between two of the same nationality. Still, intermarriages between Scandinavians and persons of American or of other alien stock, are not infrequent, tho the number and significance of such marriages is more a matter of personal opinion and estimate than of exact statistics, since the latter are lacking. The opinions expressed in this chapter are based upon the inconclusive figures of the census reports, upon a study of a large number of brief biographies, and upon a considerable acquaintance with conditions in the Northwest. The biographies, it should be noted, are almost exclusively of men of Scandinavian birth, whose intermarriage with American women is less common than that of American men with Scandinavian women.[319] [319] Bremer, _Homes of the New World_, II, 222, 227, 236; Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 372, 380, 384, 404, 423, 429, 438, 504, 530. Before the flood tide of immigration in the period beginning about 1880 brought to America so many young, unmarried women, intermarriages were more infrequent than in the later time. Hence the discussion of the matter in the Census Report of 1880 would not necessarily hold true for the subsequent period: "There is but one important element (other than the Irish) which manifests an equally strong indisposition to intermarriage, viz., the Scandinavian. This element appears in an important degree in but few of the States and Territories embraced in the following tables, but in these the effects of intermarriage are slight. Thus in Wisconsin, while there are 42,728 persons born on our soil having both Scandinavian father and Scandinavian mother, there are but 2,083 persons having a Scandinavian father and an American mother. In Dakota, the respective numbers are 10,071 and 418; in Minnesota 69,492 and 1,906.... It will be noted that in some of the States and Territories where the Scandinavians are few and where it is notorious that they are thoroly mingled with the general population, the proportion of intermarriages is not a low one."[320] The figures for the children of such mixed marriages given in the reports of the Twelfth Census certainly reveal a decided increase in the number, especially when the necessary allowance is made for the decreasing birthrate naturally incident to the development of urban communities and to filling up of States, which took place between 1880 and 1900.[321]