schools here, a matter in which steps should be taken promptly. In no foreign language, however carefully it may have been learned, can one develop as well as in one's mother tongue. Besides that, in learning English the result is that one spends half one's time learning to read it, that is, to master ordinary speech, which still does not contain anything which could be called educational or factually important, just stories about cats and dogs, such as most readers contain."

The plans for a Finnish-language school advanced, then, but here, too, there was a lack of suitable materials for teaching that language. J. W. Lähde therefore wrote and in 1889 published a brief primer and reader for children. Actually, one earlier, similar work had been published in Hancock, Michigan in 1877, but Lähde's book was far superior and served as the model for a score of subsequent primers of the same kind.

The school in New York Mills actually materialized, but it was not a success. It lacked sufficient support; it lacked qualified teachers, for English was to be the main item in the curriculum, and most of the immigrant teachers did not speak it adequately themselves. English was dropped, and what was left was but religious instruction and the teaching of Finnish.

Similar attempts were made in many other communities, and similar results followed. To explain these attempts, Jokinen's thesis'° suggests that various suspicions prevailed among the Finns regarding the adequacy of the American schools: the Socialists considered that the American schools gave false ideas about the classes of society; religious circles were dismayed at the lack of religious instruction; some ardent Finns were worried about the fate of the Finnish language. Nevertheless, no Finnish school managed to exist for many years. Had they succeeded, they might have made the transition period even more difficult for the children of the immigrants. Most of them were spared this, for when they reached school age they went to the American schools and their Americanization was speeded up.

Language difficulties: That the first Finns in America had language difficulties is easy to believe, when their complete ignorance of the language upon their arrival in America is taken into consideration, together with the attitude of many that it was even unnecessary to learn English at all. Interview forms prepared by the Minnesota Finnish-American Historical Society contain the question, "Do you speak any other language besides Finnish?" Answers to this question have been revealing, with

10. Jokinen. op. cit.

154