THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS APRIL NINETEEN HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE VOL. XIX-11 OFFICIAL ENCOURAGEMENT OF IMMIGRATION TO IOWA In the days immediately following the close of the World War, when the incidents of that struggle were still vividly remembered, the legislature of the State of Iowa enacted statutes intended to aid in Americanizing the people within its bounds.1 Legislation such as this is a confession that some of the inhabitants of the State are still aliens in language and perhaps in spirit; and provokes a thorough study of the circumstances surrounding the planting of foreign communities on Iowa soil, for the story of the immigrant was not always completed when the incoming alien first found himself on the streets of an American seaboard town. Where in the wide land before him should his permanent abiding place be? In his answer to this question he was guided by motives that are of the greatest significance in our understanding of his subsequent relation to the new country. His choice of location may have been influenced or determined by free lands, political and religious conditions, groups of fellow countrymen already settled in a State or Territory, the solicitation of land and railroad companies, or the invitation of the State or community. The problem of this study is to discover how far the State of Iowa, which is now charged with the responsibility of educating its people in American ideals, was responsible for the decision of foreigners to make their homes upon its fertile prairies. 1 The statutes referred to are: "An Act requiring the use of the English language as the medium of instruction in all secular subjects in all schools within the state of Iowa" and "An Act requiring the teaching of American citizenship in the public and private schools located in the state of Iowa and providing for an outline of such subjects."— Laws of Iowa, 1919, pp. 219, 535. The original pioneers of Iowa were distinctly American: the census of 1850, the first in which nativities were recorded, indicates this fact. Of those born without the State of Iowa, natives of Ohio led, with Indiana as second. Pennsylvania, the New England States, Kentucky, and Tennessee also contributed important elements. Of the 192,214 inhabitants in Iowa at that time, 20,969 were foreign born — eleven per cent. Neighboring States, however, exhibited larger proportions: in Illinois and Missouri approximately thirteen per cent and in Wisconsin thirty-six per cent had been born in foreign lands. A decade later, an increase had taken place in all the States of the Upper Mississippi Valley, with the exception of Wisconsin which exhibited the same figure. Fourteen per cent in Missouri, sixteen per cent in Iowa, nineteen per cent in Illinois, and thirty-four per cent in Minnesota were foreign born.3 Slavery, which led immigrants to shun the southern States, tended also to keep settlers from Missouri. "No German ought to live in a slave state", declared Eduard Zimmerman in a sketch describing his visit to Missouri. His advice was followed. The inflow of Germans which had early set in toward that State was checked, the stream being deflected to other parts of the then Northwest, but Iowa did not receive from the first great wave of nineteenth century immigration a share equal to that of her neighboring free States. Geography was an important factor in distribution. A map in the Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, illustrates graphically the influence of physical features. The darkest coloring, indicating the greatest number of foreignborn, is placed as a heavy border along the seacoast and 2 Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, pp. xxxvi, 663, 717, 925, 948. 3 Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Population, p. xxxi. 4 Zimmerman's Travel into Missouri in October, 1838, in The Missouri Historical Review, Vol. IX, p. 41. |