Little Russia, the seat of turmoil, is the home of the Ruthenians, or Ukranians. They are also found in southeastern Galicia, northern Hungary, and in the province of Bukowina. They have migrated from all these provinces and about 350,000, it is estimated, now reside in the United States. They, too, are birds of passage, working in the mines and steel mills for the coveted wages that shall free them from debt at home and insure their independence. Such respite as they take from their labors is spent in the saloon, in the club rooms over the saloon, or in church, where they hear no English speech and learn nothing of American ways.
It is impossible to estimate the total number of Russian Slavs in the United States, as the census figures until recently included as "Russian" all nationalities that came from Russia. They form the smallest of the Slavic groups that have migrated to America. From 1898 to 1909 only 66,282 arrived, about half of whom settled in Pennsylvania and New York. It is surprising to note, however, that every State in the Union except Utah and every island possession except the Philippines has received a few of these immigrants. The Director of Emigration at St. Petersburg in 1907 characterized these people as "hardy and industrious," and "though illiterate they are intelligent and unbigoted."[[39]]
So much in brief for the North Slavs. Of the South Slavs, the Bulgarians possess racial characteristics which point to an intermixture in the remote past with some Asiatic strain, perhaps a Magyar blend. Very few Bulgarian immigrants, who come largely from Macedonia, arrived before the revolution of 1904, when many villages in Monastir were destroyed. For some years they made Granite City, near St. Louis, the center of their activities but, like the Serbians, they are now well scattered throughout the country. In Seattle, Butte, Chicago, and Indianapolis they form considerable colonies. Many of them return yearly to their native hills, and it is too early to determine how fully they desire to adapt themselves to American ways.
Montenegro, Serbia, and Bulgaria, countries that have been thrust forcibly into the world's vision by the Great War, have sent several hundred thousand of their hardy peasantry to the United States. The Montenegrins and Serbians, who comprise three-fourths of this migration, are virtually one in speech and descent. They are to be found in New England towns and in nearly every State from New York to Alaska, where they work in the mills and mines and in construction gangs. The response which these people make to educational opportunities shows their high cultural possibilities.
The Croatians and Dalmatians, who constitute the larger part of the southern Slav immigration, are a sturdy, vigorous people, and splendid specimens of physical manhood. The Dalmatians are a seafaring folk from the Adriatic coast, whose sailors may be found in every port of the world. The Dalmatians have possessed themselves of the oyster fisheries near New Orleans and are to be found in Mississippi making staves and in California making wine. In many cities they manage restaurants. The exceptional shrewdness of the Dalmatians is in bold contrast to their illiteracy. They get on amazingly in spite of their lack of education. Once they have determined to remain in this country, they take to American ways more readily than do the other southern Slavs.
Croatia, too, has its men of the sea, but in America most of the immigrants of this race are to be found in the mines and coke furnaces of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In New York City there are some 15,000 Croatian mechanics and longshoremen. The silver and copper mines of Montana also employ a large number of these people. It is estimated that fully one-half of the Croatians return to their native hills and that they contribute yearly many millions to the home-folks.
From the little province of Carniola come the Slovenians, usually known as "Griners" (from the German Krainer, the people of the Krain), a fragment of the Slavic race that has become much more assimilated with the Germans who govern them than any other of their kind. Their national costume has all but vanished and with it the virile traditions of their forefathers. They began coming to America in the sixties, and in the seventies they founded an important colony at Joliet, Illinois. Since 1892 their numbers have increased rapidly, until today about 100,000 live in the United States. Over one-half of these immigrants are to be found in the steel and mining towns of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, where the large majority of them are unskilled workmen. Among the second generation, however, are to be found a number of successful merchants.
All these numerous peoples have inherited in common the impassive, patient temperament and the unhappy political fate of the Slav. Their countries are mere eddies left by the mighty currents of European conquest and reconquest, backward lands untouched by machine industry and avoided by capital, whose only living links with the moving world are the birds of passage, the immigrants who flit between the mines and cities of America and these isolated European villages. Held together by national costume, song, dance, festival, traditions, and language, these people live in the pale glory of a heroic past. Most of those who come to America are peasants who have been crushed by land feudalism, kept in ignorance by political intolerance, and bound in superstition by a reactionary ecclesiasticism. The brutality with which they treat their women, their disregard for sanitary measures, and their love for strong drink are evidences of the survival of medievalism in the midst of modern life, as are their notions of class prerogative and their concept of the State. Buffeted by the world, their language suppressed, their nationalism reviled, poor, ignorant, unskilled, these children of the open country come to the ugliest spots of America, the slums of the cities, and the choking atmosphere of the mines. Here, crowded in their colonies, jealously shepherded by their church, neglected by the community, they remain for an entire generation immune to American influences. According to estimates given by Emily G. Balch,[[40]] between four and six million persons of Slavic descent are now dwelling among us, and their fecundity is amazing. Equally amazing is the indifference of the Government and of Americans generally to the menace involved in the increasing numbers of these inveterate aliens to institutions that are fundamentally American.
The Lithuanians and Magyars are often classed with the Slavs. They hotly resent this inclusion, however, for they are distinct racial strains of ancient lineage. An adverse fate has left the Lithuanian little of his old civilization except his language. Political and economic suppression has made sad havoc of what was once a proud and prosperous people. Most of them are now crowded into the Baltic province that bears their name, and they are reduced to the mental and economic level of the Russian moujik. In 1868 a famine drove the first of these immigrants to America, where they were soon absorbed by the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania. They were joined in the seventies by numbers of army deserters. The hard times of the nineties caused a rush of young men to the western El Dorado. Since then the influx has steadily continued until now over 200,000 are in America. They persistently avoid agriculture and seek the coal mine and the factory. The one craft in which they excel is tailoring, and they proudly boast of being the best dressed among all the Eastern-European immigrants. The one mercantile ambition which they have nourished is to keep a saloon. Drinking is their national vice; and they measure the social success of every wedding, christening, picnic, and jollification by its salvage of empty beer kegs.
Over 338,000 Magyars immigrated to the United States during the decade ending 1910. These brilliant and masterful folk are a Mongoloid blend that swept from the steppes of Asia across eastern Europe a thousand years ago. As the wave receded, the Magyars remained dominant in beautiful and fertile Hungary, where their aggressive nationalism still brings them into constant rivalry on the one hand with the Germans of Austria and on the other with the Slavs of Hungary. The immigrants to America are largely recruited from the peasantry. They almost invariably seek the cities, where the Magyar neighborhoods can be easily distinguished by their scrupulously neat housekeeping, the flower beds, the little patches of well-swept grass, the clean children, and the robust and tidy women. Among them is less illiteracy than in any other group from eastern and southern Europe, excepting the Finns, who are their ethnic brothers. As a rule they own their own homes. They learn the English language quickly but unfortunately acquire with it many American vices. Drinking and carousing are responsible for their many crimes of personal violence. They are otherwise a sociable, happy people, and the cafes kept by Hungarians are islands of social jollity in the desert of urban strife.