Little better off are the Slavs clustered by themselves in some "mining-patch" in the coal-fields or in the industrial quarter of a metal town. The general population does not associate with them, and they have their own church, school, customs, and festivals. The men pick up a little English, the women none at all. It is really the children that are the battle-ground of old and new. Let them mingle freely with Young America, and no pressure from their parents can make them remain different from their playmates. They dread the nickname of "Hun," "Hunkie," or "Bohunk" as if it were poison, and nothing will induce them to use their home tongue or take part in the organized life of their nationality.
In the big rural settlement, however, the children can be kept from outsiders, and the parents, who want them to settle on the farm, usually have their way. A few of the more restless dive off the island into circumambient America. For a little time the second generation appears progressive; it dresses flashily and shows itself "sporty." But after it marries it loses spirit, settles down, and obeys priest and parent. Whether the system can hold the third generation remains to be seen.
Obviously, the bird-of-passage Slovak or Croat who has left a wife at home, and who roughs it with his compatriots in a "stag" boarding-house in a dreary "black country," is a poor subject for assimilation. His life is bounded by the "boarding boss," the saloon-keeper, the private banker, and the priest—all of them of his own folk. Aside from the foreman's cursing, American life reaches him only through the eye, and then only the worst side of it. But for the good pay, he would hate his life here; and he goes back home with little idea of America save that it is a land of big chances to make money.
SMALL ABILITY OF IMMIGRANT SLAVS
Without calling in question the worth of the Slavic race, one may note that the immigrant Slavs have small reputation for capacity. Many observers, after allowing for their illiteracy and lack of opportunity, still insist that they have little to contribute to our people. "These people haven't any natural ability to transmit," said a large employer of Slavs. "You may grind and polish dull minds all you want to in the public schools, but you never will get a keen edge on them because the steel is poor." "They aren't up to the American grade," insisted the manager of a steel-works. "We have a 'suggestion box,' and we reward valuable suggestions from our men, but precious few ever come from immigrant labor." The labor agent of a great implement-works rates the immigrant 75 in ability as compared with the American. A Bohemian leader puts his people above the Americans in music and the fine arts, but concedes the superiority of the Americans in constructive imagination, organizing ability, and tenacity of purpose. "The Czechs," he says, "are strong in resistance but are not aggressive."
A steel-town superintendent of schools finds the bulk of the children of the Slavs "rather sluggish intellectually." They do well in the lower grades, where memory counts most; but in the higher grades, where association is called for, they fall behind. Of 23,000 pupils of non-English-speaking fathers, 43.4 per cent. were found to be behind their grade; the percentage of retardation for the children of Bohemian fathers was only 35.6 per cent.; but for Poles, the retardation was 58.1 per cent., and for Slovaks 54.5 per cent. While this showing is poor, there are good school men who stoutly maintain that it is still too soon to judge what the Slav-American can do.
THE ALARMING PROSPECT OF SLAVIC IMMIGRATION
An outflow of political exiles comes to an end when there is a turn of the political wheel; but a stream squeezed out by population pressure may flow on forever. So long as the birth-rate remains high, the mother-country is not depleted by the hemorrhage. "What has been the effect of emigration to America upon conditions in Bohemia?" I asked of an intelligent Czech. "Bohemia," he replied, with emphasis, "is just as crowded to-day; the struggle is just as hard as if never a Bohemian had left for America." "Will Polish emigration remain large?" I asked a leader of the Polish-Americans. "Yes," he replied, "it will continue for a long time. The Poles multiply at an extreme rate, and there is no room for them to expand in Poland."
Still, these minor currents may be lost in the flood that is likely to roll in upon us, once the great central Slavic mass of 80,000,000 "true Russians" is tapped. "This," observes the Immigration Commission, "affords a practically unlimited source of immigration, and one which may reasonably be expected to contribute largely to the movement from Europe to the United States in the future." "The economic conditions which in large part impel the emigration of these races (Russian Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians and Finns) prevail also among true Russians, and already they are beginning to seek relief through emigration."