28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



state Number of Poles. 



Pennsylvania 21,929 



New York 14,364 



Illinois 8,818 



Massachusetts 5,916 



New Jersey 5,689 



Connecticut 3,299 



Ohio 2,502 



Michigan 1,899 



Wisconsin 1,059 



All other states 4,225 



Total 69,620 



The Slovaks. 



There are two factors that more than any others tend to preserve 

 the purity of a race. They are the inaccessibility and the Tininviting 

 nature of the country it inhabits. Thus, races occupying a barren moun- 

 tainous country or a country covered by trackless forest and impassable 

 marshland are apt to be of purer racial type than the races living upon 

 the great natural highways of commerce and trade or occupying terri- 

 tory rich enough to be inviting to covetous eyes. These factors have 

 had much to do with the preservation of the purely Slavic type as 

 represented by the Slovaks. This people occupies the rough mountain- 

 ous country on the Hungarian side of the Carpathians, well back from 

 the vallev of the Danube. 



The Slovak is very closely allied racially to the Bohemian or Czech. 

 Their languages are similar, the Slovak being the more primitive and 

 more like the old Slav. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, the Slovaks used the Bohemian language for all printed or writ- 

 ten forms, but about that time a separatist movement began and an 

 effort was made to develop a Slovak literature. This movement was 

 unfortunate for both Czech and Slovak, because they had to resist the 

 same natural enemies — aggressive Pan-Germanism on the one side, and 

 the ever-intrusive Magyar on the other. 



Physically, the Slovaks are a sturdy stock, a little taller than the 

 Poles. The great majority of the men are unskilled laborers. The 

 following table indicates how the Slovaks were distributed for the year 

 ended June 30, 1902 : 



Ratio to 



State. Number of Slovaks. Total Slovaks Landed. 



Pennsylvania 19,930 54 per cent. 



New York 4,904 13 



New Jersey 3,479 9 



Ohio 3,153 9 



Illinois 2,114 6 



Connecticut 1,025 3 



All other states 2,332 6 



Total 39,934 100 per cent. 



