In addition to age, the proportion by sex is significant in the picture of an immigrant group's development and preservation. It has been argued that immigration to a country close to home has a tendency to include more women than men, while the reverse is true in immigration to a distant land, 63 and the Finnish pattern supports this thesis. Recent emigration from Finland to Sweden, for example, has been predominantly female, while moves across oceans have been predominantly male. For each 100 Finnish women to arrive in the United States in 1893-1900 there arrived 153 men; in 1901-1910, 187.4 men; in 1911-1920, 126 men; 1921-1930, 148.3 men; 1931-1940, 59.5 men; 1941-1950, 100.5 men. 64 Especially in the earlier years, emigration was not the movement of families as a whole, but much more the going forth of unmarried men, whose goal was to earn money and then to return to Finland to marry and build their own home. Or else the father of a family came to America alone first, to prepare a home, to which wife and children could follow a year or two later. The later increase in the number of women reflected in the above figures was in all probability one of the most important factors in the stabilization of tradition and in the development of a new generation of Finnish descent in the new homeland. Before the increased arrival of Finnish women, marriages to women of other nationality backgrounds had seemed to balance the figures. In a study in 1936 of 350 marriages involving Finns, Kolehmainen was able to draw 1915 as a dividing line: marriages before that date were apt to be mixed, but following that date purely Finnish marriages predominated. 65

For purpose of comparison, in the matter of sex predominance in emigration the Soini commune figures show that 111 men left the country while only 35 women did so (and of the women, 4 later returned.) Some were already married, and the above figures include the 27 couples involved. 66

Frequently, of course, the departure of married men (or their wives) could result in family tragedies. The following chart speaks for itself:

Immigrants who had   Family members left behind:

left families behind

them:   Wives   Husbands   Children

1901    2,465   31   5,707

1902    3,912   23   8,702

63. W. Jokinen, op. cit. p. 43.

64. Suomen Tilastollinen Vuosikirja 1950. p. 67. Cf also immigration statistics in series No. XXVIII (24 pamphlets).

65. American Journal of Sociology. November 1936. 66. Soini parish records, op. cit.

61