The Scandinavian press, in complaining of "a failure to get a due share of offices," in declaring that Norwegians are "entitled to ten seats" in the Wisconsin legislature when they happen to have but three, or in insinuating that they have never been fittingly recognized in Iowa, resorts to political claptrap, often quite unworthy of the journal printing it. The facts so easily forgotten are that the counties and legislative districts in which the Scandinavians are a ruling majority are comparatively few, while the districts in which they are an influential minority are very many.[444] The system of representation in the United States is not based on any racial divisions or class distinctions, and not until some scheme of minority representation is adopted can any foreign element get its "share" of the political plums. It would be hard to suggest a more dangerous and disrupting experiment, in these decades when aliens by the hundreds of thousands, not to say millions, enter the country and are incorporated into the body politic, than to attempt to "recognize" the various alien factors in complex public affairs, even if they were all as adaptable as the men from the Northlands. Nothing would do more, for example, to develop the latent religious and racial antipathies between the Scandinavians and the Irish. The fundamental assumption, therefore, which lies back of all claims for "recognition" of Swedish-Americans, or other hyphenated Americans, as such, savors of ward politics and the machine, rather than of political equity or right, and just so far as it does this it menaces social and political safety. [444] _Billed Magazin_, I, 139 (1869); _Skandinaven_, Feb. 5, 1896--an editorial printed, like many others, in English and evidently designed for the consumption of editors of English papers. It is also evident that _Skandinaven's_ readers understood English. Söderström, _Minneapolis Minnen_, 132, gives a fairly complete list of all the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes elected or appointed to city, state or county office, even including policemen. For similar list for a rural county, see Tew, _Illustrated History and Descriptive and Biographical Review of Kandiyohi County, Minnesota_ (1905). CHAPTER XIII. CONCLUSION