The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914Babcock, Kendric Charles
History
The Scandinavian Element in the United States: University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 3, September, 1914
Babcock, Kendric Charles
Scandinavians -- United States
1820-1830 189 91 280 .2
1831-1840 1,063 1,201 2,264 .4
1841-1850 539 13,903 14,442 .8
1851-1860 3,749 20,931 24,680 .9
1861-1870 17,094 109,298 126,392 5.2
1871-1880 31,771 94,823 115,922 242,516 8.6
1881-1890 88,132 176,586 391,733 656,451 12.5
1891-1900 52,670 95,264 230,679 378,613 9.8
1901-1910 65,285 190,505 249,534 505,524 5.7
[148] Nelson in his _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 253 ff., gives
some careful and excellent tables of statistics compiled from
official publications of the United States and of the three
Scandinavian kingdoms. Too much reliance should not be put upon
the earlier figures derived from either source. It will also be
noted that the European figures are in many cases given in even
fifties and hundreds, which savors of estimates rather than of
exact statistics. Nelson, p. 244, declares that these foreign
statistics, so far as they go, are more reliable than the
American.
[149] Sundbärg, _Sweden_ (English Translation), 132; Sundbärg,
_Bidrag till Utvandringsfrågan från Befolkningsstatistisk
Synpunkt_, 34 ff.
[150] The statistics of Norwegian and Swedish immigration were
combined down to 1868, but for convenience here the combination
is continued to the end of the decade. Statistical Abstract of
the U. S. (1912), 110.
The fluctuations of the annual immigration have been very great, as an
inspection of the accompanying chart and the tables in Appendix I, will
readily show. The addition of other lines to this chart indicating the
fluctuations in the numbers of immigrants from Germany and Ireland,
demonstrates that these rather striking variations were chiefly caused
by conditions and prospects in America, rather than by circumstances in
Europe. In 1849 the total immigration of Norwegians and Swedes passed
2,000, and even reached 3,400, but the terrible scourge of cholera in
that year under which so many of the Scandinavians in the West fell,
caused a falling off of more than half in 1850. After the panic of 1857,
the Danish immigration fell from 1,035 to 252 in one year, while the
total from the Northern lands fell steadily from 2,747 to 840 in 1860.
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