It's often mistakenly said Chicago was the second largest Polish city in
the world (actually third largest after Warsaw and Lodz). But in the early
20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after
Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes
(and the second generation were almost enitrely Swedes on both sides of
the family). That was almost 9 percent of the city's population, and
surpassed Gothenburg's 130,000.

With the city being "the undisputed "capital" of Swedish America"
https://www.lib.niu.edu/1993/ii930731.html it is interesting that Chicago
has never had a Swedish mayor. The time it came closest was in 1915 when
Judge Harry Olson almost defeated "Big Bill" Thompson in the 1915
Republican mayoral primary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1915_Chicago_mayoral_election
Olson might have won had not Thompson's supporters in Protestant
neighborhoods spread the rumor that Olson's wife was Catholic and that
therefore if elected Olson would subvert the public school system... (One
could even say that the 1915 primary was a contest between two Swedes
becuase the man behind Thompson's campaign was allegedly Frederick Lundin,
the self-described "poor Swede."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lundin Eventually Thompson broke
with Lundin.)

Of course, defeating Thompson would not guarantee Olson victory in the
general election, but it is at least plausible he would win; the
Democratic nominee Robert Sweitzer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sweitzer had his own weaknesses: he
"undertook misguided efforts to drum up German support for his candidacy,
which ultimately proved to be at the peril of his overall appeal to non-
German/Austrian voters.[17] Materials supporting Sweitzer had been
distributed in the German and Austrian neighborhoods of Chicago baring
images of Kaiser Wilhelm and Emperor Franz Joseph were distributed urging
all citizens of central European origin to support Sweitzer and the
"Fatherland".[8] This became significant when Sweitzer did not disavow
these materials, thus lending credence to an informal association of him
with the Central Powers war effort.[8] Thompson's campaign seized on this,
and distributed identical materials to Chicago's Polish and
Czechoslovakian neighborhoods."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sweitzer And Chicago Demcorats in
thiose days lacked the strong machine they were later to builoc

(Olson ran for mayor in 1919 again and again lost to Thompson in the GOP
ptimary. But in 1919 he probably never had a chance, becuse the "reform"
vote was divided beween Olson and Charles Merriam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Chicago_mayoral_election#Results_2 Even
the combined "reform" vote would not have been enough to defeat Thompson,
though. Denouncing Thompson for lack of wartime patriotism was no longer
effective after the War was over, and in any event many German-American
and other erhnic voters agreed with Thompson's skepticism of wartime
patriotism. "The closer you get to Wall Street the more flags you see"
Thompson had quipped... Also, Thompson had strong support from Chicago's
growing Black community.)

Olson does not even rate a Wikpedia article today--try
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Olson and tou will be redirected to
acoustical engineer Harry F. Olson... He had a reputation as a
"progressive" "scientific" judge, one of the first to have his court hire
a psychiatrist for its full-time staff. "Under the leadership of its chief
judge, Harry Olson, who presided over the court until 1930, the Municipal
Court was a model of what Willrich calls "socialized law," that is, law
that "purposefully reshaped society by directly addressing concrete
problems of social life" (p. 98). This meant, in practice, a flexible,
highly discretionary use of law, a rejection of formalism, and an escape
from the iron rigidities of common law doctrine."
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9192

Unfortunately, like some other Progressives of that era, he became an
enthuisast for eugenics.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/744321?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents This
was hardly uncommon at the time, did not yet have the discredit it was to
get from Hitler (and Olson never linked eugenics to any doctrine of
inferiority of Blacks or immigrants [1]) and it's not clear whether it
would have affected his performance as mayor, but acccording to the
Wikipedia article on the 1919 mayoral race played some part n his defeat
that year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Chicago_mayoral_election#Results_2

It is tempting to say that if Olson had been elected in 1915, the city
would not have developed the strong ties with Al Capone and organized
crime it did under Thompson. But that was largely in Thompson's later
terms, not the 1915-19 one, and in any event I have the feeling that like
another "refrom" mayor, William Dever, Olson would not have lasted more
than one term.

[1] Indeed ,sometimes he expressed sympathy with immigrants: "Quite often
many of those who volunteer to act as probation officers have notions of
their own as to how other people should live and act. A young lady whose
antecedents are from Vermont or New England might think the Russian Jews
do some things they ought not to do, and that the Poles do some things
that they ought not to do, and that the Scandinavians do some things that
they are accustomed to doing that they ought not to do, and. . , many of
them may seek to impose their ideas of behavior on these citizens of
foreign extraction and foreign customs, their own ways of thinking and
living. That causes some trouble."
https://books.google.com/books?id=BvFLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA208

(My apologies for "Swede Home Chicago"
https://www.archeophone.com/catalogue/swede-home-chicago/ )

--
David Tenner
dtenner@ameritech.net

On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 03:44:58 -0000 (UTC), David Tenner wrote:

> But in the early
> 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after
> Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes
> (and the second generation were almost enitrely Swedes on both sides of
> the family). That was almost 9 percent of the city's population, and
> surpassed Gothenburg's 130,000.

It was not a Swedish city. It was an American city with many of Swedish
origin living in it.

On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 11:58:55 +1100, SolomonW <SolomonW@citi.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 03:44:58 -0000 (UTC), David Tenner wrote:
>
>> But in the early
>> 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after
>> Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes
>> (and the second generation were almost enitrely Swedes on both sides of
>> the family). That was almost 9 percent of the city's population, and
>> surpassed Gothenburg's 130,000.
>
>It was not a Swedish city. It was an American city with many of Swedish
>origin living in it.

May as well describe Winnipeg as the second biggest Filipino city in
North America (behind NYC) and the biggest Icelandic city in North
America.

Of course when the numbers are REALLY big you get New York City
rivalling Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the city with most Jews in the
world.

On Sat, 04 Dec 2021 22:36:54 -0800, The Horny Goat wrote:

> On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 11:58:55 +1100, SolomonW <SolomonW@citi.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 03:44:58 -0000 (UTC), David Tenner wrote:
>>
>>> But in the early
>>> 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city after
>>> Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and second-generation Swedes
>>> (and the second generation were almost enitrely Swedes on both sides of
>>> the family). That was almost 9 percent of the city's population, and
>>> surpassed Gothenburg's 130,000.
>>
>>It was not a Swedish city. It was an American city with many of Swedish
>>origin living in it.
>
> May as well describe Winnipeg as the second biggest Filipino city in
> North America (behind NYC) and the biggest Icelandic city in North
> America.
>
> Of course when the numbers are REALLY big you get New York City
> rivalling Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the city with most Jews in the
> world.

Chicago bills itself as the largest Polish city outside of Poland with
approximately 1,900,000 people of Polish ethnicity in the Chicago
metropolitan area.

The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote in
news:2dnoqgtp0hph7bp2h0vb4ip4gkjqudf14n@4ax.com:

> On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 11:58:55 +1100, SolomonW <SolomonW@citi.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 03:44:58 -0000 (UTC), David Tenner wrote:
>>
>>> But in the early
>>> 20th century, it really was the world's second largest Swedish city
>>> after Stockholm; by 1900 Chicago had 145,000 first- and
>>> second-generation Swedes (and the second generation were almost
>>> enitrely Swedes on both sides of the family). That was almost 9
>>> percent of the city's population, and surpassed Gothenburg's 130,000.
>>
>>It was not a Swedish city. It was an American city with many of Swedish
>>origin living in it.
>

You're being a bit too literal-minded. The point is that it was the world's
second largest concentration of Swedish-origin (and in that era largely
Swedish-speaking) people.. There is nothing comparable with the Philippines,
where there are 21 cities with more than 500,000 people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Philippines easily
dwarfing any Filipino community in North America.

And ethnic affiliations lasted a long time in Chicago. As A.J. Libeling
wrote in his (much hated by Chicagoans) *Second City* "Communication between
the residents of the different wards is further limited by the pronounced
tendency of immigrant groups in Chicago to coagulate geographically. In
Chicago, a man known as a Pole or a Norwegian may not have been born in
Poland or Norway, or of prents born there. If even only his grand-
parents were so born, he refers to himself as a Pole or a Norwegian if he
wants to sell coffins or groceries or life insurance to others like himself.
A national identification is absolutely essential if he wishes to enter
politics. A Chicago party ticket is an international patchwork, like Europe
after the Treaty of Versailles. Most of the members of the Chicago national
blocs, however, think of Europe as it was cut up by the Congress of
Vienna..."
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.155705/page/n115/

Nobody in Chciago in the first few decades of the twentieth century would
have had any hesitancy in calling a politician such as Olson (or Fred Lundin)
"a Swede" (Lundin indeed liked to call himself the "poor Swede"), Anton
Cermak "a Bohemian," Edmund K. Jarecki "a Pole" etc. (actually, most
Chicagoans would use more offensive terms...) although they were of course
all US citizens.

--
David Tenner
dtenner@ameritech.net

On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 02:00:26 -0000 (UTC), David Tenner wrote:

> Nobody in Chciago in the first few decades of the twentieth century would
> have had any hesitancy in calling a politician such as Olson (or Fred Lundin)
> "a Swede" (Lundin indeed liked to call himself the "poor Swede"),

unlike, say Chinese, e.g. like to eat dog meat or spitting loudly in
public, Swedes do not have values that are outside of mainstream American
values of the time.

Are there any values that you feel these people had that are Swedish that
they had?