The repeal of the law of 1889 was not so prompt in Illinois as it was in Wisconsin, for it was not until 1893 that a new and expurgated compulsory education measure took its place.[421] [419] _Laws of Illinois_, 1889, Act of May 24. [420] _America_, V. 201 (Nov. 20, 1890). See also editorial in the same volume, 172-174 (Nov. 13, 1890). [421] _Laws of Illinois_, 1893, Acts of February 17 and June 19, 1893. A close and detailed examination of the legislative journals and the statutes of the Northwestern States does not reveal above a half-dozen laws which can be said to be due to the leadership and direct influence of the Scandinavians as such. On the other hand, in the field of general legislation these men have been indistinguishable from the native-born in ability, efficiency, and uprightness; the gross and net products of the labors of those legislatures with many Scandinavian representatives in such states as Minnesota and North Dakota, are not perceptibly different from the output of legislatures in which no Swede or Norwegian ever sat, as in Michigan or Colorado. Scarcely a law has been passed for the purpose of catering to the preferences, or of catching the vote, of the sons of the Northlands. An exception to this general statement is the Minnesota law of 1883 providing for the establishment of a "professorship of Scandinavian language and literature in the State University, with the same salary as is paid in said University to other professors of the same grade." The man to be chosen must be "some person learned in the Scandinavian language and literature, and at the same time skilled and capable of teaching the dead languages so called."[422] [422] _The General Statutes of the State of Minnesota_, 1894, secs. 3908-3909 (_Laws of 1883_, Chap. 140.) The motives of the makers of the law were benevolent enough, and circumstances warranted its passage, but nothing could better illustrate the utter carelessness and looseness with which American State legislators do their work, than this simple statute. It was drawn up by a distinguished American lawyer, Gordon E. Cole of St. Paul, at the request of Truls Paulsen by whom it was introduced into the legislature.[423] It created a chair of "Scandinavian language," when there is no such language, living or dead; the professorship was established "in the State University," when the laws of the State recognize no institution bearing such a name. The Norwegian who presented the bill, the legislature (including twenty-one other Norwegians and Swedes) which passed it, and the Governor who signed it, all showed the same quality of ignorance and neglect of fact, law, and English. A second law, undoubtedly based directly upon the first, even to copying its confusion of terms, was the act passed by the legislature of North Dakota in 1891, creating a chair of Scandinavian language and literature in the University of North Dakota.[424]