THE third-class waiting-room in the Oderberg station, on the Northern Railroad of Austria, is splendid vantage ground from which to watch the racial and national conglomerate that forms the insecure structure called the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Here from her East and West, her North and South, one meets those great social currents which stream from the mountains to the plains and from the villages to the cities. Here, also, the tides of immigration come in and go out, and by their volume one can judge the prosperity of the United States, or at least the condition of our labour markets.
Here the “spick and span” German, from across the border, meets his less vigorous and more “gemuethlich” cousin, the Austrian.
Here the Moravian and the Czech touch elbows and glory in their Slavic speech—the age-long battle for the supremacy of their language being one of the few points which they have won in this contentious monarchy.
This is also the meeting place of Southern and Western Slavs, and here the fierce looking Bosnians carry, in their erstwhile weapon belts, pins, pipes, jack-knives and razors, which they sell to their Slavic brothers of the West; they even deign to speak in broken German to the hated “Schwabs,” when driving their bargains.
Glancing around the crowded waiting-room, one sees Ruthenians and Wallachians, in picturesque garb, travelling from their impoverished mountain homes to the upper Danubian plain. They are harvesters, and their backs are bent under the weight of crude cooking utensils and primitive harvest implements.
Close to this group are fiercely moustachioed Magyars, in their semi-Oriental, loose, white linen trousers and heavy sheepskin coats. They are going to take charge of the flocks of sheep on some lordly estates; they know the ways of all four-footed animals, and are considered faithful shepherds.
In one corner stand smoothly shaven, coarse featured Slovaks, in clothing, home-made, from their felt boots to their felt hats; primitive folk they are, seeking labour in the industrial cities along this busy highway.
Of course, there are Jews from the East and the West; as far removed from each other in culture and beliefs as those two points of the compass, yet all swayed by the same mysterious force which at its best turns their vision towards Jehovah, and at its worst towards Mammon.
They all are divided more or less by speech, blood and faith and are united, only by the poverty which compels them to travel third-class on the government’s railways, whose low-zone tariff encourages the migrations of its people; thus easily relieving economic distress in some regions and providing labour where it is needed.