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Wajeeha Jamshed
Honors 1000 Seminar: Who Are We?
Dr. Harrison
October 22, 2015
Aino in America
January 20th, 1903
Aino Perl sat on the steps outside her familys rickety house in the
Oulu Province of Finland (Jutila). Her set, or uncle, had sent a letter from his
home in the United States of America and her mother insisted that they wait
for Father to return home before opening it. Straining her eyes, she spotted
her father in the distance.
Hyv ilta! Any luck finding a job? she asked (Wargelin).
Her father shook his head tiredly and asked about her day before
going inside. Ainos mother showed her father the letter and they talked in
hushed voices until Aino could not be patient any longer and tugged on her
fathers sleeve for him to read the letter.
Okay! Okay! Ill read it out loud, he said and plopped down onto the
dusty armchair. He tore open the letter, stiff from the salty winds of the
Atlantic Ocean, and began to read:

Mauno Perl
9382 Woodward Ave
Detroit, MI, USA
January 4th, 1903
Vihtori Perl
Kimmo Street 14B
Oulu Province, Finland

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Dear Brother,
Houska joulua! It has been so long. I miss you, Ulla, and
Aino greatly. I hope you are all doing well (Wargelin).
Since I moved to the USA, much has happened. I have
settled in the Copper Island in Michigan. There is a good
number of Finns in this area and it is nice to live and work with
people with a similar history to ours. I work in the mines and
although it is tough work, it pays well. There is no fighting here
like there is back home and for that I am grateful (Virtanen).
I traveled to the city of Detroit a few weeks ago and was
amazed at how busy the city is. There is an automobile industry
growing in this area that is creating many jobs.
I saw an article in the newspaper about the famine back
home that worried me greatly. It said that the chilly rains and
frosts were killing off the pea, bean, and potato crops and
causing a famine (CRY FOR AID FROM FINLAND). Combined with
the civil unrest that our country is already experiencing, I am
writing you this letter to urge you to America to start a new life
for yourself. Leaving your home will be tough, yes, but you must
think about the well-being of your family above all else. I will
await your reply.
Your Brother,
Mauno

Father gingerly sat the letter down on the coffee table. There was a
heavy silence for a moment or two.
Well, he said, It looks like we are moving to America. Start packing
your things.

March 8th, 1903

Ainos first impression of the Detroit was that it was very loud and
strange. Horses pulled carriages right next to glistening automobiles. Tall
buildings loomed above them and the store windows she peered into

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displayed beautiful flowing dresses and delicate laces. Beautiful churches

were around every corner (Martelle). However, no one seemed as awestruck
about these things as her and her newly arrived family. When she asked
about it, her father said that Americans were used to the astonishing
(Toqueville).
She was sitting in the small apartment that her set had brought them
to upon their arrival from the city-dock of Hango (CRY FOR AID FROM
FINLAND). Her father had left with her uncle to look for a job. Set Mauno
said that his best luck was to try at the Ford factories or to look for work as a
carpenter or other laborman (Virtanen). He said that if he did a good job,
there was always a chance for promotion and better work in America. People
had social mobility here and could build a better life for themselves if they
worked hard.
Aino wanted to work hard, too. She had saved the newspaper that the
bread from the bakery down the road had come wrapped in and was trying to
teach herself English. She did not want to stand out too much at her new
school and practiced reciting the strange English words exactly as the locals
did. Americans had a dull, monotonous way of saying their words that was
very different than Finnish. She looked at herself in the mirror as the strange
sounds rolled off her tongue (Fisher).
She sighed as she put down the newspaper and walked over to the tiny
window overlooking the crowded street below. Detroit was a strange and
intimidating place to her but she was excited to start her new life here. She

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was excited to be an American.

Afterword
In 1900, roughly a third of Detroits residents were foreign born. Ainos
experience was one that thousands of men, women, and children around her
were experiencing simultaneously. They all traveled to Detroit for a better life
than the one that they were leaving behind and in that they were unified
(Martelle). This changed every aspect of the city, from social to economic to
political, and set it on the path to become what it is today.

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Reference Page
"CRY FOR AID FROM FINLAND." Detroit Free Press (1858-1922): 1. 22 Dec.
1902. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.
Fisher, Phillip. Democratic social Space. Still the New World: American
Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 33-55.
Jutila, Kalle T. "The Finns in America: A Bit of History." Records of the
Columbia Historical Society Washington.D.C., Vol. 50, [The 40th
Separately Bound Book] (1948): 59-69. JSTOR. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review, 2012.
Print.
Tocqueville, Alexis. Fortnight in the Wilderness. Tocqueville in America. Ed.
George W. Pierson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. 229-259.
Virtanen, Keijo. "The Influence Of The Automotive Industry On The Ethnic
Picture Of Detroit, Michigan, 1900-1940." University Of Turku. Institute
Of General History. Publications 9.(1977): 71-88. America: History &
Life. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.
Wargelin Brown, K. Marianne. "Finnish Americans." Gale Encyclopedia of
Multicultural America. Ed. Thomas Riggs. 3rd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale,
2014. 137-151. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.