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

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

Seton-Watson adds that "the independence and confidence of the returned emigrants are in striking contrast with the pessimism and passivity of the elder generation." It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Magyars, who represent the "superior race" in Hungary, say that "America has spoiled the Slovak emigrant."

In travelling across Hungary from Fiume to Budapest, and thence to Cracow, Poland, I passed successively through regions and districts inhabited by many different racial types, but I think I gained a more vivid notion of the strange mixture of races which make up the population of the Dual Monarchy from what I saw in Fiume than in any other part of the country. In Budapest, which is the great melting pot of the races in Hungary, there is much the same uniformity in the dress and manners of the different races that one meets in any other large and cosmopolitan city. Fiume, on the contrary, has a much larger number of people who seem to be still in touch with the customs and life of their native villages, and have not yet learned to be ashamed to wear the quaint and picturesque costumes of the regions to which they belong.

Among the most striking costumes which I remember to have seen were those of the Montenegrin traders, with their red caps, embroidered vests, and the red sashes around their waists, which made them look like brigands. After these, perhaps the most picturesque costumes which I saw were worn by a troop of Dalmatian girls, the most striking feature of whose costume was the white woollen leggings, tied at the knee with ribbons. One figure in particular that I recall was that of a little woman striding through the streets of Fiume, driving a little train of beautiful cream-coloured oxen.

All these distinctions of costume emphasized each other by contrast, and as they each signified differences in traditions, prejudices, and purposes of the people to whom they belonged, they gave one a sort of picture of the clash of races in this strange and interesting country.

Even among those races which are no longer divided by costume and habits, racial distinctions seem to be more clearly drawn than at Budapest. For example, to a large extent the business of the city seems to be monopolized by Germans and Jews. The Government officials are Magyars, but the bulk of the population are Italians and Croatians. As a matter of fact there are three distinct cities, which commonly go under the name of Fiume. There is the modern city, with its opera house, its handsome official buildings, which is Magyar; the elder city, with its narrow, gossiping streets and Roman triumphal arch, which is Italian, and, finally, just across the canal, or "fiume," which seems to have given the name to the city, is a handsome new Croatian town which is officially distinct from the rest of the city, having its own mayor and town officials.

Fiume itself has an exceptional position in the Kingdom of Hungary. It is what was known in the Middle Ages as a "free city," with a governor and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament. The mayor, I understand, however, is an Italian, who has married a Croatian wife. This alliance of two races in one family seems to have a certain advantage in the rather tumultuous politics of the city, for I was told that when the Croatians, as sometimes happens, go to the mayor's house in procession, with their grievances, the mayor's wife has been able to help her husband by addressing her own people in their native language.

The most interesting thing I saw in Fiume, however, was the immense emigration building, which has accommodations, as I remember, for something like 3,000 emigrants. Here are the offices of the Hungarian emigration officials, and in this same building are received and cared for, until the next succeeding sailing, the accumulations of the stream of emigration which flows steadily out at this port from every part of the kingdom.

Here the emigrants, after they have been medically examined, given a bath and their clothes disinfected, are detained until the time of embarkation. In company with United States Consul Slocum, from whom I received much valuable information, I visited the emigration building and spent a large part of one day looking into the arrangements and talking, through an interpreter, with emigrants from different parts of the country who were waiting there to embark.

Under his guidance I inspected the barracks, furnished with rows upon rows of double-decked iron beds, observed the machinery for disinfecting the clothing of emigrants, visited the kitchen, tasted the soup, and finally saw all the different nationalities march in together to dinner, the women in one row and the men in another. The majority of them were of Magyar nationality; good, wholesome, sturdy, and thrifty people they seemed. They were from the country districts. Some of them were persons of property, who were going to America to earn enough money to pay off mortgages with which their lands were burdened. Very many of them had relatives, a brother, a sister, or a husband already in America, and they seemed to be very well informed about conditions in the new country where they were going.

The two most interesting figures that I noticed among the intended emigrants were a tall, pallid, and barefooted girl, with rather delicate and animated features, and a man in a linen blouse which hung down to his knees, his feet and legs incased in a kind of moccason, surmounted with leggings, bound with leather thongs. The girl was a Ruthenian, who was going to meet relatives in America. The man, whom I noticed looking, with what seemed to me rather envious interest and curiosity, at a pair of American shoes on sale at one of the booths in the big common hall, was a Roumanian.