Talk:Swedish emigration to the United States

message: The last paragraph of the first part of the article: "After a dip in the 1890s, emigration rose again, causing national alarm in Sweden. A broad-based parliamentary emigration commission was instituted in 1907. It recommended social and economic reform in order to reduce emigration by "bringing the best sides of America to Sweden". The commission's major proposals were rapidly implemented: universal male suffrage, better housing, general economic development, and broader popular education. The effect of these measures is hard to assess, as World War I (1914–1918) broke out the year after the commission published its last volume, reducing emigration to a mere trickle. From the mid-1920s, there was no longer a Swedish mass emigration." It overstates the importance of the "Parliamentary emigration commission of 1907". It's true they proposed social reforms. However, it was the Labour movement that lead the way and proposed and fought for those things to come true from the 1880 and forward. This was a time of major political and socital changes. The history of social progress is not as technical as "comission X proposed changes - parliament implemented it". --I_have_no_username 21:37, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Overstateing things

message: It should be made clear in the picture that depicts the distribution of Sweds in the US that the picture depicts percentage of county make up and not actual numbers of Swedish Americans.  I don't know how to edit pictures.  This distinction is important because the map beguiles the large Chicago area population and to some degree the huge Minneapolis population.  What this map is good for is identifying counties with strong Swedish character.  Anyways, the map should be labeled as county percentage.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.219.156.65 (talk) 21:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the suggestion. I have made a "temporary" wording change to identify that is distribution by county, and will ask the regular editors to consider a more extensive modification in the description of the image at their earliest opportunity.  Risker (talk) 21:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture of distribution

message: First of all to all the editors of this article, congratulations. It was informative, and a pleasure to read. Second I will change just a paragrapher that can be better. But again, congratulations on the Main Page. Samuel Sol (talk) 12:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Congratulations and some adjusting 

message: Is the second sentence "The virgin land of the US frontier..." really appropriate for an encyclopedia article?
:Yes, of course it is.  Indirect discourse.  This is a characterization of the image.  I don't know what kinds of encyclopedias would reject the line, but I can only assume they're not useful.  Geogre (talk) 14:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's an entirely apt and accurate description for land to which agriculture is being introduced for the first time.MarkVolundNYC (talk) 15:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

text: The sentences are also characterizing the image of the place.  I.e. to European emigrees, this is "virgin land."  Of course the first inhabitants of the Americas had practiced agriculture there, and there would be some of the worst abuses of American Indians during the "Indian Wars" in the area, but to the European peasant, this is "virgin land," and the sentence is aiming at the pull of emigration.  Geogre (talk) 15:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virgin land 

message: Following block of text was removed from this article by user:Yuslo.
:The religious repression practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church was widely resented, as was the social conservatism and class snobbery of the Swedish monarchy. Population growth and crop failures made conditions in the Swedish countryside increasingly bleak. By contrast, reports from early Swedish emigrants painted the American Midwest as an earthly paradise, and praised American religious and political freedom and undreamed-of opportunities to better one's condition. 
Would there be any reason to reintroduce this text in any other form into the article?
Chirag (talk) 17:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: *I have no opinion on the removal, but this is completely wrong.  Your characterization is not the way Wikipedia works; it flies in the face of WP:BB.  You know as well as I do that FA reviews are very thinly read.  Do you really think "all questions were entertained and answered"?  From all of humanity?  The article doesn't get encased in plastic in order to remain on the main page for a day untouched, you know.  You hopefully also know that the heavy surge in edits that articles receive when they hit the main page make the articles far better.  Tempshill (talk) 20:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

text: *You didn't say your statement was limited to that particular removal.  You made a broad claim that nobody gets to change the contents of a main page article "because of a private concern", which could mean anything - a concern about an error or a typo? - then claimed that "all questions were entertained and answered" in the FA process; and claimed we have to go through the talk page for changes.  Each of those three statements is incorrect.  Please do scold other editors for individual poor edits, but you went way overbroad on that paragraph.  Tempshill (talk) 22:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Following Text was removed 

message: Need to request an edit block on this page, as it is being vandalized frequently. Chirag (talk) 17:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Edit blocks are considered very undesirable on the main page despite the vandalism that always occurs.  The reason is to try to make sure every user gets an opportunity for a mini-introduction to editing Wikipedia (even the vandals get one by vandalizing).  Tempshill (talk) 20:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a rather unique reasoning.  We don't protect main page articles because we don't protect to prevent editing.  We do protect if we believe that only vandalism is going to come through, or if we believe that there is a concerted effort to vandalize.  This is rarely the case with main page articles, although it has occurred in the past.  When the FA is of a controversial topic -- something involving one of the world religions or one of the historically contentious issues or a matter of ethnicity -- we can face concerted vandalism which requires protection.  Ask Raul.  He'll tell you that articles are selected for the main page often to avoid those situations.  Protection at Wikipedia should be extremely rare and always temporary, but the main page article isn't really there to be target practice for new users.  Geogre (talk) 20:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, but it doesn't hurt much to be target practice, certainly (as you note) not enough to merit an edit block.  Tempshill (talk) 22:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Two photographs have been vandalized. One was changed to an Al Jolson movie poster and another to a ham. Dr. Morbius (talk) 22:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need to request a Edit Block 

message: I was expecting to see James J. Hill's famous quote somewhere in this article or one of its sub-articles, I'll just put it here in case one of the regular editors thinks it's appropriate and wants to put it in:
EditorInTheRye (talk) 21:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been uninvolved in the article, except at FAC, but the primary author is away, so I've been keeping an eye on it.  When she was writing, it, though, I kept wishing it could address some of the heritage of New World Swedes.  E.g. Minnesota's Farmer's and Progressives, their version of Republican Party, and on to folks like Joe Hill and the number of Swedes involved in the labor movement in the US.  I wonder if the Hill, above, is referring to the engineering prowess or the industriousness of Swedes, though?  Geogre (talk) 22:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As a reliable and efficient labour force, I believe. EditorInTheRye (talk) 23:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a great quote (assuming it's accurate and not apocryphal, though even in the latter case it would be useful) and future additions along the lines Geogre describes would certainly add to the article.--Bigtimepeace | talk |  contribs 06:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  James J Hill quote 

message: This is obviously an excellent article (major props to Bishonen), but I do have a problem with the third to last sentence in the "Late 19th Century" section. As a partial explanation for the decline of the "pull" of the U.S. it reads: "The price of land rose, and the U.S. was torn by monopoly capitalism and labor unrest." In a sense this is true, but in a relatively flawless article it stuck out as a bit of a sore thumb.
Less importantly, the term monopoly capitalism (while not necessarily inaccurate) is a bit problematic as it is linked to the article on "state monopoly capitalism," generally a strictly Marxist concept. A more neutral term for the rapacious capitalism of the Gilded Age ("rapacious capitalism" probably is not it!) would be desirable.
More importantly, it is not made clear what, if any, the precise causal relationship was between the excesses of American capitalism (and the concomitant labor unrest) and a decline in Swedish immigration to the U.S. I think this needs to be proven, not merely asserted, particularly because it is an interesting point if true. Americans had been complaining about the railroads and JD Rockefeller for quite awhile, so why did prospective Swedish immigrants only take note of it in the 1890s, as is implied? Similarly, labor revolt preceded the closing of the frontier (think the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 or Haymarket) but also rose up at other points in the early 1900s before, during, and after WWI (think the Wobblies and the failed strike wave of 1919). It's unclear how this worker unrest (or for that matter the relatively tranquil period when the AFL utterly dominated the labor scene in the late 19th and early 20th century) connects with reduced Swedish immigration.
I don't bring this up to be niggling, but because if there are connections that would be interesting and should be expanded upon--and if not the sentence should probably be removed. Increasing land prices are an obvious reason why fewer Swedes would hop the Atlantic so that point should of course stay, but we ought to show specifically how Swedish folks were more reluctant to immigrate because of labor/capital battles/excesses of the era. I'm assuming the original source for the sentence is Barton's book, but if it was a throwaway, unsourced sentence on his part it probably does not bear inclusion (nor does it if it was tossed in by a Wiki editor without a source). Better though would be to expand on the point with some specifics. A historian discussing letters from Swedish-Americans in Chicago sent to relatives back in Sweden about the labor troubles there during 1886 or comments from prospective Swedish immigrants on the evils of Standard Oil (the latter seems quite a bit more unlikely) are the kind of things I have in mind. Any thoughts about this would be welcome, though I know the primary creator of the article seems unfortunately to have left us for the time being.--Bigtimepeace | talk |  contribs 05:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Minor issue

message: Two minor things I noticed and thought it could be done, although my lack of wiki-power stops me of doing it. First I think the footnotes, as there are 50+ of them, should be in 2 collumns. They are too long as it is now. And second, I think this page could use some archiving. There are finished discussions on the top of it. Samuel Sol (talk) 17:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok. After getting my laz a** and reading Help:Archive I archived the 3 discussion I though wasn't more pertinent. If any of the editors think it is wrong. Please revert it. Samuel Sol (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnotes and Archiving the talk

message: An early sentence, "The religious repression practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church was widely resented, as were the social conservatism and class snobbery of the Swedish monarchy," has been changed several times back-and-forth now.  The dispute is whether the verb in the ending clause should be plural (were) or singular (was).  The subject of the clause is the compound (plural) subject "the social conservatism and class snobbery."  The syntax may fool a reader's "ear" so that the reader thinks that it is a singular subject, requiring the singular verb was.  But the simple fact is that the subject is plural.  There's no fancy way of getting around it.  The interpretation of what the subject is is not in any way affected by the structure or the verb number of the introducing clause.  The clause could be rewritten: "...as the social conservatism and class snobbery were..." (leaving off the prepositional phrase "of the Swedish monarchy," which also can never have an impact on determining what the subject is).
The argument by the opposing contributor is that the clause should be read as, "as was the social conservatism and [as was] class snobbery...."  Nice try, but verbs just don't work that way!  The number of the noun and the number of the verb have to agree as they are written--implied words "don't count."  In my preceding sentence, would you claim that the verb should be "has," because the implied sentence is, "The number of the noun [has to agree] and the number of the verb has to agree"?  No, of course not!  And that sentence has essentially the same structure as the sentence in question, but with different syntax.  The argument doesn't fly. Holy (talk) 21:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Peter Isotalo has "fixed" the sentence by recasting it.  It sure seems odd, though, to "fix" a perfectly good, nicely-written sentence, that flows with the style and tone of the article, in order to avoid a supposed "controversy" which is really no controversy at all, but rather a grammar issue which could be clearly understood by an elementary school student who pays attention in class. Holy (talk) 01:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Noun-verb number agreement

message: Thanks for your revert and edit summary, Sluzzelin. I removed another cite tag from the lede, at a sentence which is also well referenced below. As you say, per WP:LEADCITE, the lede is a summary of the article, and doesn't need citations, provided its claims are sourced in the body of the article. (Without this principle, the lede would probably be seriously unsightly, with several footnotes per sentence.) I realise people mean well when they pepper the lede with redundant cite tags, but it's not a good idea. Bishonen | talk 09:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Cite tags in the lede

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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message: The article has some issues with MOS, especially inconsistent referencing. Some citation needed tags. The lead is too long compared to the article body. There is also a striking gap in coverage in that the effects of the emigration on Sweden are not discussed at all. (t · c) buidhe 01:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:URFA/2020|FA sweeps]]