Portland Press Herald Glass Negative Collection

In 1920, close to 4,000 immigrants in Portland came from countries where English was not the primary language: Italy, Russia, China, Syria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Greece.

About 20,000 Portland residents had at least one parent born outside the United States. The 1920 census counted 1,453 foreign-born whites as illiterate.

This was Clara Soule's target population.