Read the passage. The official class naturally disliked to see people leave the country and were disposed to sneer at almost everything American. Being well educated at the university and holding their offices for life, they were looked up to with great respect by the common country-people. NO wonder, therefore, that to the official class many things in America seemed bizarre. Just think, a railsplitter being president and a tailor vice-president! Besides, was not almost everybody in America carrying revolvers, and quick on the trigger on slight provocation? Was not justice administered by mobs or vigilance committees? In addition to that, there was negro slavery and so much humbug—"American humbug!” Why should any one go to a country like that?

Some had gone, however, following the Sloopers of '25 from 1836 on, but they were mostly tenants or very poor farmers who had barely scraped up enough to pay the passage on sailships and canal boats as far as Chicago or Milwaukee. Of some of the few educated persons leaving it was said they were no longer safe at home and that for them America was a safer and more suitable place. Letters were coming back from the poor emigrants, telling how much land they had acquired for little or nothing, how much stock they had and how they fared on pork, eggs, and white bread every day, instead of in Norway (as they used to say) "one day on soup and herring and the next day on herring and soup,” or "one day mush and milk and the next day milk and mush.”

–"Recollections of a Norwegian Immigrant,”
Andreas Ueland

People who migrated West, regardless of whether they were immigrants, were most often motivated by

a desire to better their economic situations.
a fear of the rapid social and economic changes resulting from industrialization.
the need to escape religious or social persecution in cities.
the hope of mitigating health problems caused by unsanitary conditions in cities.