One reason for the low ebb of church influence among the Danes is undoubtedly the wranglings of the clergy over matters of theology and polity, a continuation of the factional differences between the followers of Bishop Grundtvig and the anti-Grundtvigians or Inner Mission people in the years 1854-1895. In its beginning, the Danish Lutheran Church in America unanimously adopted this resolution: "We, the Danish ministers and congregations, hereby declare ourselves to be a branch of the Danish National Church, a missionary department established by that church in America."[142] The government of Denmark recognized this relation; graduates of the University of Copenhagen, who received calls to churches in America, were ordained by a bishop in Denmark, and were appointed by the King as regular ministers in the Danish Church; and since 1884 the Danish Government has made a small annual appropriation for the education of ministers for the American branch of the Danish Church. This allowance was at first spent in Denmark, but since 1887, in the United States.[143] But with all this effort at maintaining unity and continuity, the American branch has not been united, peaceable or effective. [142] Bille, _History of the Danes in Amerika_, 18. [143] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 18n. The appropriation was $840 per year. If the test of supporting educational institutions for their own people be applied to the Danes, the same deficiency of interest and contributions as in matters ecclesiastical, will be revealed. The attempt of the Grundtvigians to set up the peculiar "high schools" which they maintained in Denmark, for instruction of the common people in Scandinavian history, mythology, religion, language, and literature, all in Danish, was doomed to failure.[144] The first of these schools was located at Elk Horn, Iowa, in the midst of the largest Danish settlement in the United States, yet in the fifteen years after its establishment in 1878 the average attendance never reached forty. Four other schools, in Ashland, Michigan, in Nysted, Nebraska, in Polk County, Wisconsin, and in Lincoln County, Minnesota, all established between 1878 and 1888, suffered from like indifference and lack of financial help; not one averaged thirty pupils per year. Aside from tuition, the contributions of the Danes for educational purposes did not reach fifty cents per communicant during any consecutive five years up to 1894.[145] This is a poor showing alongside the three dollars per communicant contributed by the Norwegians when they were building Decorah College in 1861 to 1865.[146] [144] _Ibid._, 21; _Kirkelig Samler_, 1878, 320. [145] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 16. [146] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 15; Estrem, "Historical Review of Luther College," in Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, II, 24. CHAPTER VII. A HALF CENTURY OF EXPANSION AND DISTRIBUTION, 1850-1900.