Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1942, Side 38

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LE NORD
to Alaska and of the sailor settlers are still to be found among
the immigrants of a later generation. Though few in Alaska it-
self, they are more numerous on the Pacific Coast of the United
States.
The main body of Finnish emigrants characteristically an-
swered the call for labour described above; some of them went
to Michigan and Minnesota, others to Ohio and Wisconsin. They
spread over the Dakotas to the Pacific Coast, and to the At-
lantic Seaboard about Massachusetts and Maine; on the Cana-
dian side they were especially to be found on the borders of
Michigan and Minnesota, which still remained their centres. The
majority of the emigrants did not keep to the mining, lumbering,
and transport work with which they started; it was only na-
tural that agriculture should attract them, and soon they were
taking some of the most difficult land in the U. S. A. under culti-
vation. Those who did remain in the above-mentioned trades were
not inconsiderable in number, and some of them, especially in
more recent times, have started working in factories, chiefly in the
Eastern States, while the young women have often entered
domestic service in New York, Chicago, and Montreal.
Considering the smallness of our population and the relative
poverty of our country, this emigration, especially at the end of
the I9th and the beginning of the 20th century, was naturally
regarded with alarm, and gradually came to be felt as a dangerous
draining of our resources which, it was thought by many patriots,
our people could afford neither from a national nor from an eco-
nomic point of view.
For this reason it began to be viewed with disfavour, and
met with some opposition, which at times acquired considerable
strength. On the other hand, humanitarian feelings and con-
siderations of justice demanded that the matter should be re-
garded with sympathy and an understanding of its underlying
causes. The Government took up the attitude that no legislative
obstacles should be placed in the way of emigration, but that
the home community could accept no responsibility for those
who left.
When emigration was at its height — i. e. at the turn of the
century — it was not possible, because of the Russian super-
vision, for the Finnish Government to take up a different atti-
tude, but private enterprise, especially in Church circles, began
to consider and try to supply the spiritual needs of the emigrants.