tality, religious liberty and national independence were lost,
and Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. As a race the Poles boast
such names as Copernicus the astronomer, Kosciusko the patriot warrior,
and Chopin the composer."[66]

[Sidenote: Distribution]

The distribution in America in 1904 was as follows: Illinois, 123,887,
of whom 107,669 were in the vicinity of the Chicago stockyards;
Pennsylvania, 118,203, mainly in the anthracite coal regions and about
Pittsburg, with 11,000 in Philadelphia; New York, 115,046, 50,000 of
them in New York City and 35,000 in Buffalo; Wisconsin, 70,000, 36,000
in Milwaukee; Michigan, 59,075, 26,869 in Detroit; Ohio, 31,136, 15,000
in Cleveland and 9,000 in Toledo; in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New
Jersey, between 20,000 and 30,000 each; in Connecticut and Indiana, over
10,000 each; and in smaller numbers widely distributed. Their preference
for the larger cities is shown by these figures. Recent immigrants are
going more into the New England States. Already there is a second
generation of them in the cities and the farming country of the Middle
West, and they have their own teachers and doctors. In New England they
are spreading in the factory towns, and Chicopee, Massachusetts, has six
thousand of them; while in the tobacco belt of Connecticut they furnish
a majority of the farm hands. Ten years ago Hartford had only three or
four hundred Polish families; to-day there is a parish of a thousand
people, and they have built a Catholic church and given $20,000 toward a
school.

[Sidenote: Independent in Spirit; Open to the Gospel]

Like most of the Slavs, the Poles who come here are commonly poor, and
of the peasant class; about one third of them are illiterate. They are
clannish, and clash with the Lithuanians and other races. Lovers of
liberty, they clash also with the Catholic authorities, going so far
even as organized rebellion to obtain control of their church properties
and freedom in the choice of priests. They have a superstitious dread of
Protestantism, which has been misrepresented to them as extremely
difficult. "Polish priests about Pittsburg are said to boast of the
number of Bibles, distributed by Protestants, which they gather from the
people and burn." If once Protestantism gets a grip upon them, rapid
defection from ecclesiastical tyranny will follow. Dr. H. K. Carroll
figures that the Polish Catholics as distinct from Roman Catholics, have
forty-three ch