SWEDISH

SWEDISH. During the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States. The main "pull" was the availability of low cost, high quality farm land in the upper Midwest (the area from Illinois to Montana), and high paying jobs in mechanical industries and factories in Chicago, Minneapolis, Worcester and many smaller cities. Most migration was of the chain form, with early settlers giving reports and recommendations (and travel money) to relatives and friends in Sweden. A major push factor inside Sweden was population growth. In the earliest stages of immigration, crop failures and the wish to escape the established state church played a role. During the era of mass immigration from about 1870, more important factors included well-organized and increasingly affordable transportation.

Swedish migration peaked 1870-1900. By 1890 the U.S. census reported a Swedish-American population of nearly 800,000. Many immigrants became classic pioneers, clearing and cultivating the prairies of the Great Plains, while others remained in the cities, particularly Chicago. Single young women usually went straight from agricultural work in the Swedish countryside to jobs as housemaids. Many established Swedish Americans visited the old country in the later 19th century, their narratives illustrating the difference in customs and manners. Some made the journey with the intention of spending their declining years in Sweden.

After a dip in the 1890s, emigration rose again, causing national alarm in Sweden. At this time Sweden's economy had developed substantially, but the higher wages prevailing in the United States retained their attractiveness. A broad-based parliamentary emigration commission was instituted in 1907. It recommended social and economic reform in order to reduce emigration by "bringing the best sides of America to Sweden". The commission's major proposals were rapidly implemented: universal male suffrage, better housing, general economic development, and broader popular education, measures which also can be attributed to numerous other factors. The effect of these measures on migration is hard to assess, as WORLD WAR I (1914–1918) broke out the year after the commission published its last volume, reducing emigration to a mere trickle. From the mid-1920s, there was no longer a Swedish mass emigration.

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