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 me