Case Study Conclusion

​​The change in focus and location for the brothers coincided with societal changes.  The United States had emerged in a position of influence from WWI.  Industrialization and urbanization in the US were booming even as European countries suffered from the results of years of brutal war.  Railroads, telephones and the personal car were opening transportation and communication possibilities.  The electrical grid was being established in every town of any size.  Along with all the opportunities that came with development were people who wanted to keep control over who would benefit  from the rising prosperity.  In addition to a ban on Chinese-American citizenship, there was fear mongering about too many people from Eastern or Southern Europe.  The Great Migration of African Americans from Southern states to work in factories in the North resulted in de facto segregation in growing cities and a feeling that no more new “foreigners” were needed.   In response to what was perceived as a threat from outsiders, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson Reed Act.  Included in this legislation were the Asian Exclusion Act and the National Origins Act.
This was a Federal law that prevented any immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from every country outside Latin America or Canada.  The Act also created the country’s first formal border control service, the U. S. Border Patrol.  A "consular control system" was established that  allowed entry only to those who first obtained a visa from a U.S. consulate abroad.  This had the effect of closing Ellis Island and replacing it with Border Patrol agents who checked passports and visas.  According to the Department of State, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."[2] 

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“How did you like my daughter?  Is she just as clever at crying as I was when I was small?  She is going to be an American girl anyhow.  How is Kristine?  I don’t know yet how to get her over here.  It’s not so easy to enter the United States any longer, the regulations are stricter.  I will get hold of some papers for her and send which might be a help.”
From: Fredrik Hjelmeland in Waukegan, Illinois 
To: Mikal Hjelmeland in Bygstad, Norway
June, 1924

  After returning to Norway in 1923 to marry Kristine, Fredrik returned to the United States and got a Delco contract to sell and install generators in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin.  Kristine was to join him within months but discovered she was pregnant and decided that she wanted to have the baby in Norway. Already being a citizen of Canada, Fredrik’s status was unchanged, but Kristine and baby Odny were still in Norway. By the time they came in 1925,  they were among the first to be processed using the new system with immigration being processed on the ship.
Fredrik was so anxious about this that he booked Kristine on a ship of the Norwegian American Line, the Bergensfjord, with a first-class ticket. This ticket included the train to Chicago and priority entry processing.   For a college paper, Odny interviewed her mother. Kristine told Odny that their entry was seamless without any of the overwhelming details that so many before her suffered.  
Part II
In America
“I was born April 15, 1924 in Førde, Norway,  I was baptized in Førde kyrkje.  My mother, Alf, a nephew of my father and I left Norway March 21,1925.  Before we could leave the boat in New York, we were to have a physical examination. However, my mother and I only had our eyes examined. While we were on the train carrying us to Chicago, we were supposed to have a sleeper.  It was all paid for but we never got it.  Mother couldn’t talk English….My mother tells me she literally carried me from Norway to Chicago.”
Norwegian Class Report, Professor Gulbrandson, 
Odny Hjelmeland, 1943
St. Olaf College
In 100 years of migration from Norway to America, chain migration had become well developed.  In recent years, movement from Latin American countries to the United States and concentrations of non-English speaking people in neighborhoods or even whole communities has been characterized as a threat but it is nothing new.  Our entire history as a nation is filled with groups of people banding together who recruit others to join them for the chance for a better life.  When friends and relatives arrive, they seek to  preserve their customs, language, food and religion.
In the sense that Fredrik sponsored Kristine and his daughter coming to Waukegan, they were part of chain migration but only in that narrow sense.  Fredrik had not settled in a Norwegian American community when he took the Delco contract.  Had he followed the pattern of the time, he would have found work in Western Wisconsin or Eastern Minnesota where people from their area of Norway had settled.  Kristine would have had more time to learn English, would have had other women eager to teach her how to manage in America.  Instead, she came to Waukegan, Illinois, a blue collar, rapidly expanding factory town with representation from many ethnic groups and migrants from rural areas.  Their neighbors weren’t Norwegian, Fredrik’s customers weren’t Norwegian either.  Fredrik was relatively new in town and had connections with other men, not couples or women.  In this way Kristine did not benefit from either the social life or the freedom to learn new customs gradually.  Fredrik was out working most days, so Kristine was forced to learn English as quickly as possible and figure out on her own, how to cook and keep house and take care of their child.   
Nor was she a settler.  She was not living on the edge of developed land.  She was not negotiating vast stretches of prairie or even newly established towns.  Waukegan is one of the oldest communities in Illinois.  It sits on a deep natural harbor and was a trading post for the Potawatomi Indians as early as 1643.  The word Waukegan is derived from the Potawatomi word for fort or trading post.  It was incorporated in 1859.  By the time Kristine arrived 75 years later it was a thriving small city.  The 1920 Federal Census reveals that Waukegan had grown nearly 20% between 1910 and 1920.  By the time Kristine and Odny came the population was estimated to be 23,000, more than 10 times the size of the village Kristine had lived in her entire life.    U.S. Steel and Wire and Johns Manville provided many factory jobs for African Americans, Swedish, and especially Armenian workers.  
Kristine told stories often of her early days in Waukegan when she didn’t know the names of foods in the markets.  When Fredrik was out in the countryside selling generators and electrical installations, she would go to a neighbor and stand in their kitchen or pantry and ask the name of foods and utensils. 
“Maggie was helping her learn the names of foods. Last week, before they went to the grocers, she[Kristine] had pointed to foods in Maggie’spantry and Maggie had told her what the English word was.  Some were very like Norwegian names: potatoes, carrots, bot not lokken, onions.  Farina was very difficult, cream of wheat.  
Kristine Finding Home
A.    Chossek, Ten16 Press, 
 
When Kristine had their second daughter in 1926, she had no family to attend her as she had for Odny.  Fredrik hired a nurse for her and to do the housework, but it required courage for sheltered Kristine to allow a stranger into their home.  Urban life was different from her upbringing on in a rural village, too.  She never had a large vegetable garden, she grew roses. She was not dependent on the vagaries of the farm wife’s life.   Her social life was centered in the neighborhood and in her English language lessons which she began soon after she arrived.
In 1928, she writes to her sister-in law, 
“I have made for myself my own home.  Odny and Ruth are both growing little girls, healthy and obedient.  For Christmas we bought them a little table and two chairs.  …..I wish that you were close enough that you could come and visit us.  It’s a little sad not to have anyone who knows me and my people.”
From: Kristine Kristiansen Hjelmeland, Waukegan Illinois
To:  Petrina Hjelmeland Eide, Brekstad, Norway
January, 1927


Kristine also did not have a Norwegian church where she could practice her faith or culture.  When Ruth was baptized, friends of Fredrik whom Kristine had never met, traveled from Canada to be the godparents and the rite was performed in Racine, some 20 miles away from Waukegan.  It was held at Danish speaking Gethsemane Lutheran church which, in Kristine’s mind, was better than the English speaking church she had been attending.  Kristine came out of the Haugean pietist tradition and depended on the church to reinforce moral guidelines and cultural parameters.
Kristine and Fredrik shared the aspirational hopes of their respective families. After his years of working for someone else, Fredrik became his own boss, started a business and a family.  Begun in 1930, Service Electric sold  electrical supplies and services.  Fredrik built the retail store in 1931 while Kristine and their daughters went home to Norway. Despite factories floundering and laying off people, this new business managed to support Fredrik and his family.  Kristine returned from Norway with stories of struggle and a bleak existence in their homeland. 
Kristine supported her husband’s ambitions by adapting to four new homes in their first five years in Waukegan.  Each time they moved closer to the edge of town, she made new friends, new curtains for the house, and a place in the neighborhood.  She learned English and participated in the YWCA and the Ladies aide at the newly organized Lutheran church, eventually having leadership roles. Their home became a stopping place for new immigrants on their way to Minnesota or the Dakotas.   Their homes, while modest in size were full of solid furniture, fine porcelain dishes, immaculate linens and the most modern of kitchens.  
Fredrik built his store, Service Electric while Kristine and the girls were in Norway in 1930.  The beginning of the Depression is usually said to be the NYSE crash in October 1929, but that initially did not impact most Americans who were not invested in stocks and bonds.  The economy really began to falter as manufacturing was cut due to a set of tariffs imposed by President Hoover which coincided with the beginnings of a multi-year drought throughout the Midwest known as the dust bowls.  By the fall of 1930, some people in Waukegan were beginning to be laid off as the chemical and steel parts factories saw a decline in orders.  Crop yields declined, dairy prices increased and inflation rose.
“For more than three years now we have been having bad times here in America, and it isn’t [getting} any better now as far as we can see….There are still more than 12-13 million good laborers unemployed. …Roosevelt is a good President; he is trying his best…I think it will take a long time to get the country back on an even keel….    Worst of all, there were millions of people who were pretty well off and in their middle-age.  Most of them found out that they were completely broke.  It seemed like everything had disappeared .  For an ordinary man this is hard to understand.”
To Mikal Hjelmeland in Bygstad, Norway, 
From:  Fredrik Hjelmeland, Waukegan, Illinois
September 3, 1933
This very long letter is a detailed picture of Fredrik’s experience, understanding and concerns about the times they were living through.  Kristine is not mentioned except to say that she and the girls are fine.  The brothers talked about money, land and work when they were both itinerant laborers.  Now Fredrik’s letters continue the conversations.  After beginning his letter telling of how hard it is to understand how things could get so bad so fast, he details the thousands of dollars he has lost because of unemployment and poor crops.  He lost $650 due to bank failure, $1500 in bad debt for work he had done and $10, 000 in devalued real estate.  But even to the brother who knows exactly what he is writing about, he keeps up a good face. He goes on, “Still, I am much better off than many in my class.  We have managed so far and we are even able to give some help now and then.  I still have my business.  If I am lucky enough to stay in good health, I have no worry about the future.”  In this, Fredrik embodies a spirit of believing in possibilities that immigrants as a group need to have.  No one would leave their homelands if they didn’t have a hope for something better, more interesting, more rewarding.
    In this same letter, Fredrik turns to telling Mikal about the Norwegians he has seen or who have stayed with them.  Olaf Bringeland was living with them and working now and then. Someone else wants to borrow money.  Some relatives from a farm in Western Wisconsin have visited.  Despite the Depression a World’s Fair was being held in Chicago.   
“This year [1933]the World’s Fair is being held in Chicago. Fifteen million people have visited the exhibition so far…I guess they haven’t anything else to do so if they have a few cents they take in the exhibition. Two of our relatives came from Hixton.”
    Fredrik reveals his pride and determination even as he describes how difficult it is.  
“but once again I want to say, I haven’t lost my spirit.  There will surely be sunshine one day again…..I have my business, I get some repair work now and then and I sell a little off and on, enough so we keep a balance….In 1930 there were 19 electrical contractors in in Waukegan, now there are only 3 left.  All the others went bankrupt.  How long the 3 of us can manage , I don’t know.  I’m going to hold out just as long as the other two.”




They were not wealthy, but they were part of the emerging middle class in the United States. They owned a business, had investments, traveled back to Norway every five years after World War II and sent both girls to St. Olaf college.  They became Americans while retaining what they chose of their cultural heritage and values.
 The land poor farmer and his family who came to America, specifically Wisconsin, Minnesota, or the Dakotas and started farming represents the vast majority of what we know of Norwegian immigrant stories.  
 For me, Kristine and Fredrik ‘s story tells me so much about how my path was set, what informs the choices I have made from where to live to what profession I chose.  Businessmen and helper professions dominate our family.  That business Fredrik started in 1930 still exists today as Grand Appliance.  Family run, it is a multi-million dollar retail operation in four states.  Kristine and Fredrik’s descendants include teachers, professors, philanthropists, financial advisors and not for profit administrators but not a single farmer. 
 In digging deeper into my heritage, I have learned to look beyond the bare facts to ask, how did this happen?  What choices were made?  Certainly, their individual personalities and circumstances are central to the story.  For Kristine and Fredrik, World Wars, Immigration Laws, less land to farm, more middle class opportunities in an American city, provide a framework that shapes their story.  It is the weaving of the story that fires my imagination and gives me hope for the generations that follow me.  
   


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