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considered the geographic factors to be decisive. Among younger scholars, Heinonen 17 and Jokinen, 18 another factor is added as well: that in those years when immigration was at its peak Minnesota required unskilled labor in quantity. Since the Finns belonged primarily to this category, and since ignorance of the language, too, would have made any other kind of work difficult, this must be considered a very important factor. In addition, the Finns were frankly urged by direct publicity to fill this need for unskilled labor on the railroads and in the lumber camps, and a little later in the mines. The results of the interviews cited by van Cleef in respect to the Finns' choice of land is misleading, for it is valid only as far as the very first Finns to arrive in Minnesota is concerned. Certainly the Finns were aware of what kind of land they were choosing, but the desirable land had all been bought up by the time the Finns were ready to buy. earlier arrivals had chosen the best. Free homestead lands were available only in Minnesota at the time, and even there only in the more barren and northern regions. That is why many came to Minnesota, where, because the nature was so similar to that of Finland, they knew how to clear the land and grow crops on it. They also had the only initial capital required for such a task: their own might and main. How could they have been able to buy land in the plains, with its rich dark soil, and have financed farming operations already beginning to require machinery? For all these reasons together, then, the Finnish immigrants chose Minnesota, to settle down, for the most part, in its barren but beautiful northern region.

17. Heimonen, Henry S. Finnish Rural Culture in South Ostrobothnia (Finland) and the Lake Superior Region (U.S.) A Comparative Study. Unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1941.

18. Jokinen, op. cit. p. 61.

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