,100,000 electors.

*546. The Magyar Domination.*--The explanation of this state of affairs
is to be sought in the ethnographical composition of Hungary's
population. Like Austria, Hungary contains a _melange_ of races and
nationalities. The original Hungarians are the Magyars, and by the
Magyar element attempt has been made always to preserve as against the
affiliated German and Slavic peoples an absolute superiority of
social, economic, and political power. The Magyars occupy almost
exclusively the more desirable portion of the country, i.e., the great
central plain intersected by the Danube and the Theiss, where they
preponderate decidedly in as many as nineteen counties. Clustered
around them, and in more or less immediate touch with kindred peoples
beyond the borders, are the Germans and the Slavs--the Slovaks in the
mountains of the north, the Ruthenes on the slopes of the Carpathians,
the Serbs on the southeast, and the Croats on the southwest. When the
census of 1900 was taken the total population of Hungary (including
Croatia-Slavonia) was 19,254,559. Of this number 8,742,301 were
Magyars; 8,029,316 were Slavs; 2,135,181 were Germans; and 397,761
were of various minor racial groups. To put it differently, the
Magyars numbered 8,742,301; the non-Magyars, 10,512,258. The
fundamental fault of the Hungarian electorate is that it has been
shaped, and is deliberately maintained, in the interest of a race
which comprises numerically but 45.4 per cent of the country's
population.[697] So skillfully, indeed, have electoral qualifications
and electoral proceedings been devised in the Magyar interest that the
non-Magyar majority has but meager representation, and still less
influence, at Budapest.[698] Even in Hungary proper the electorate in
1906 comprised but 24.4 per cent of the male population over twenty
years of age; and, despite the disqualifications that have been
mentioned one-fourth of the men who vote are officials or employees of
the state.

[Footnote 697: It is but fair to say that in
Hungary proper the Magyar percentage in 1900 was
51.4.]

[Footnote 698: Of the 413 representatives of
Hungary at Budapest in 1909, but 26 were
non-Magyars, and after the elections of June, 1910,
but 7.]

*547. The Demand for Electoral Reform: the Franchise Reform Bill (p. 495)
of 1908.*--In