ABSTRACT
A main function of the Danish ethnic press in the United States during the “classical” era of mass migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to mediate between the Old World and the New World - to keep Danish-American readers apprised of developments taking place back home while also acquainting them with life in the United States. Sometimes, however, a conscious effort was made by the editorship to push the readers to actually support a specific political cause, creating political ripples crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. This was the case in 1899, when the “Great Lockout” – a major labour conflict in Danish history – broke out in Denmark. During that year, editor Sophus Neble of Den Danske Pioneer – by far the largest Danish-language paper in the United States – turned his paper into a vehicle for organized labour in Denmark, collecting more than US$9,000 for the locked-out labourers through appeals to the Danish-American readership. In doing so, the editor helped forge a sense of Danish-American identity that merged Old World class-based loyalties with Nebraska-style populism and catalysed an activism rooted not in socialism but in a secular network of organizations and associations that in combination – at least in this one case – proved more formidable than organized Danish-American Lutheranism.
