The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

These different manners of settling on the soil are one of the marks by which the people in the north of Europe are distinguished from those in the south. The northern people settle in widely scattered homesteads, while the southern people invariably herd together in little villages, and each individual becomes, to a great extent, dependent upon the community and loses himself in the life about him. This accounts, in large measure, for the difference in character of the northern and southern people. In the north the people are more independent; in the south they are more social. The northern people have more initiative; they are natural pioneers. The southern people are more docile, and get on better under the restraints and restrictions of city life. It is said, also, that this explains why it is that the people who are now coming to America from the south of Europe, although most of them come from the land, do not go out into the country districts in America, but prefer to live in the cities, or, as seems to be the case with the Italians, colonize the suburbs of the great cities.

Another thing that interested me was the sight of women working on the land. I had not gone far on my way south from Berlin before my attention was attracted by the number of women in the fields. As I proceeded southward, the number of these women labourers steadily increased until they equalled and even outnumbered the men. One of these I had an opportunity to see close at hand; she was coarsely clad, barefoot, and carried a rake over her shoulder. I had seen pictures of something like that before, but never the real thing.

Outside of Italy I have rarely seen men going barefoot either in the country or in the city, but in southern Europe it seems to be the custom among the working women, and I took it as an indication of the lower position which women occupy among the people of southern Europe as compared with the position that they occupy in America. I saw many barefoot women later in the course of my journey, both in the field and elsewhere. I confess, however, I was surprised to meet in Vienna, Austria, as I did on several occasions while I was there, women walking barefoot on the pavements in one of the most fashionable streets of the city. One day, in speaking to a native Austrian, I expressed my surprise at what I had seen.

"Oh, well," he replied, "they are Slovaks."

How vividly this reminded me of a parallel remark with which I was familiar, "Oh, well, they are Negroes!"

It was the tone of this reply that caught my attention. It emphasized what I soon discovered to be another distinguishing feature of life in southern Europe. Everywhere I went in Austria and Hungary I found the people divided according to the race to which they belonged. There was one race at the top, another at the bottom, and then there were perhaps two or three other races which occupied positions relatively higher or lower in between. In most cases it was some section of the Slavic race, of which there are some five or six different branches in the Austrian Empire, which was at the bottom.

Several times, in my efforts to find out something about these so-called "inferior people," I made inquires about them among their more successful neighbours. In almost every case, no matter what race it happened to be to which I referred, I received the same answer. I was told that they were lazy and would not work; that they had no initiative; that they were immoral and not fitted to govern themselves. At the same time, I found them doing nearly all the really hard, disagreeable, and ill-paid labour that was being done. Usually I found, also, that with fewer opportunities than the people around them, they were making progress.

I was frequently surprised at the bitterness between the races. I have heard people talk more violently, but I do not think I have heard any one say anything worse in regard to the Negro than some of the statements that are made by members of one race in Austria in regard to members of some other.

I reached the city of Prague late at night, and awoke next morning in a world that was utterly new to me. It was not that Prague looked so different from other European cities I had seen, but the language sounded more strange than anything else I had ever heard. I do not pretend to understand German, yet it seemed to me that there was something familiar and friendly about that language as compared with Czech.

The Czechs are but one of the seventeen races of Austria-Hungary, each one of which, with the exception of the Jews, who are an exception to everything, is seeking to preserve its own language, and, if possible, compel all its neighbours to learn it. Preserving its own language is not difficult in the country districts, where each race lives apart in its own village and maintains its own peculiar customs and traditions. It is more difficult in the large cities like Vienna and Budapest, where the different nationalities come into intimate contact with each other and with the larger European world.