430 ANNUAL KEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915, 



of the Oder on the west had formed the western continuation of 

 the Baltic plain. Four centuries of straggle Avith Russia ensued, 

 until the Muscovite Empire absorbed the greatest portion of Poland. 



The German element is slowly spreading eastward throughout 

 the eastern provinces of Prussia which once formed part of the 

 Kingdom of Poland. The emigration of Poles to central and west- 

 ern Germany partly accounts for the German gain. From the larger 

 cities of eastern Germany, and more especially from Posen, Brom- 

 berg, Gnesen, and Danzig, steady flows of emigrants continually 

 wend their way toward the industrial centers of the west, where 

 they find higher wages and generally improved economic conditions. 

 The German Government favors this expatriation of its Slav sub- 

 jects. None of the vexations to which the Poles are subjected by 

 Government officials in their native plains are tolerated in the 

 Ehine Provinces of the Empire. The result is that notable colonies 

 of Poles have sprung up in the vicinity of industrial centers like 

 Diisseldorf or Arnsberg, in the Miinster district and the Rhine 

 Provinces. From a racial standpoint these Poles are practically 

 indistinguishable from the Nordic type of Teuton. Their presence 

 in Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia is no menace to German unity. 

 They are so easily assimilated that the second generation, speaking 

 German alone, forgets its antecedents and becomes submerged in the 

 mass of the native population. Slav settlements are particularly 

 numerous and dense along the Rhine-Herne Canal between Duisburg 

 and Dortmund.^ The heavy preponderance of Poles in certain ad- 

 ministrative divisions of eastern Germany has, nevertheless, been 

 unimpaired by the Polish emigration. Their percentage in the " cir- 

 cles " (Kreise) of Odolanow, Koscian, Ostrzeszow, Posen, Pszczynsk, 

 Olesia, and Skwierzyn still exceeds 80 per cent of the total popula- 

 tion. In the province of Posen the German-speaking inhabitants 

 still are in the minority. 



The Poles scattered in the eastern section of Germany constitute 

 the largest foreign-speaking element in the Empire's population. 

 Their number is estimated at 3,450,000 by Niederle. German census 

 returns for 1900 give 3,086,489. It must be noted here that the per- 

 centage of Jews in German Poland is high, particularly in the urban 

 areas, and that the practice of census takers is to classify them with 

 the German or Polish population according to their vernacular. In 

 Russia the last available census (1897) figures reveal the existence 

 of 1,267,194 Jews^ disseminated in the Polish provinces. This rep- 

 resents 13.48 per cent of the population of Russian Poland. Here, 



1 K. Closterhalfen, Die Polen in Nicderrheinisch-westfiilisch Industriobezirk 1905. 

 1:200,000. PI. 16 in Deut. Ei-de, vol. 10, 101]. 



2 N. Troi'nitsky, Premier Recensement g^n^ral de la population de I'Empire dc la Russie 

 1897. Vols. 1 and 2, Petrograd, 1905. 



