AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 



Many of the Czechs, as well as the Germans, 

 adopted the Old Catholic faith in its early days 

 because the Old Catholics permit the marriage 

 of the clergy and hold services in Czech or Ger- 

 man instead of in Latin. The conversion of Ger- 

 man Catholics to Protestantism began when the 

 Taafe Government granted the first concessions 

 to the Czechs, especially when liberty of con- 

 science in the schools was restricted in 1889. 

 The manifestation was only sporadic at that 

 time, but in 1899 it spread throughout the prov- 

 ince, and whole villages went over to Protestant- 

 ism. The action of the Government in canceling 

 a grant of the anti-Semitic municipal council of 

 Vienna of funds for the erection of a Catholic 

 church, as well as the movement for emancipa- 

 tion from Rome, gave occasion for a conference 

 of Catholic bishops at Vienna early in April, in 

 which some of the lay Clerical leaders were per- 

 mitted to take part. The highest administrative 

 authority had, to the consternation of the Ultra- 

 montanes, declared grants of municipal funds 

 for religious purposes to be illegal. The bishops 

 at the conference requested the Government to 

 transfer to the episcopacy the disposal of eccle- 

 siastical funds. They also appealed to the Min- 

 ister of Education to curb the school-teachers, 

 who were alleged to have assumed an attitude of 

 hostility toward the Roman Catholic Church. 

 The Clericals bitterly reproached the Protestants 

 for admitting as proselytes such converts as 

 Herr Wolf, one of the Pan-Germanic leaders, and 

 others of that party, whose ostentatious change 

 of faith was only a demonstration in favor of 

 the disruption of the empire. The Protestant 

 movement extended even to Goritz, where nu- 

 merous conversions took place among the Italian 

 and Slovene population of the town. Roman 

 Catholic Ruthenian students in Bukowina began 

 to change their religion, in order to show their 

 anti-Polish sentiments and leanings toward Rus- 

 sia, becoming members of the Greek Church. 



In Hungary also, because the archbishop re- 

 fused to employ the old Slav liturgy and many 

 of the clergy lent themselves to the Magyariz- 

 ing purposes of the Government, many Croatian 

 Roman Catholics abandoned their traditional 

 faith to join the Greek Orthodox community. 

 The episcopacy, warned by the Protestant move- 

 ment, became more chary in granting favors to 

 the Czechs in the German provinces. There had 

 been conversions even in Vienna, and when the 

 Czechs desired to have services performed by 

 their own priests for their countrymen in the 

 capital the request was refused. The institution 

 of a seminary for German priests in Silesia 

 evoked clamorous remonstrances from both the 

 Czechs and the Poles, although it is a standing 

 grievance of the German Catholics that there 

 are too few priests of their nationality. In Ga- 

 licia, where the clergy assail the Social Demo- 

 crats with extreme bitterness and accuse the 

 teachers in the state schools of propagating irre- 

 ligion, a Catholic congress at Lemberg was 

 mobbed ort May 14, necessitating the intervention 

 of the military. The economic condition of Aus- 

 trian Poland has long been such as to give cause 

 for popular discontent, and it can be largely 

 traced to negligence and nepotism in the semi- 

 autonomous provincial administration, while the 

 slackness of the educational laws has retarded 

 the intellectual progress of the people and the in- 

 difference of the aristocracy to their welfare 

 has turned them into sullen revolutionists. The 

 peasant revolt toward the end of 1898, while 

 ostensibly directed against the Jews, was in real- 

 ity a protest against the permanent poverty of 



the agricultural population. The landowners 

 themselves are deeply in debt. In the early part 

 of 1899 the Galician savings bank at Lemberg 

 was found to be insolvent, owing to gross mis- 

 management, and the Diet had to make good the 

 deficit out of the public funds to prevent a catas- 

 trophe. The German Liberal Opposition with- 

 drew from the Diet of Lower Austria, leaving 

 the Anti-Semitic Clerical majority in full pos- 

 session. The exasperation of the socialistic 

 working classes at the reactionary policy of the 

 Government and the continuance of government 

 under the emergency paragraph of the Constitu- 

 tion led them into noisy demonstrations and vio- 

 lent conflicts with the police at variance with 

 their usual respect for order. With the clergy 

 and the feudal nobility in control of the Govern- 

 ment and absolutism in force, it seemed to them 

 as though the times of Metternich were come 

 again. A meeting of the Social Democratic party 

 at Gratz to protest against a bill restricting 

 municipal suffrage enacted by the Clerical Anti- 

 Semitic majority of the Lower Austrian Diet 

 having been broken up by the authorities on 

 July 2, the audience mobbed the commissary of 

 police and paraded noisily through the streets 

 in defiance of the gendarmes who attempted to 

 stop them. The Anti-Semitic burgomaster of 

 Vienna was frequently threatened with violence, 

 and conflicts occurred almost daily between the 

 Socialists and the Anti-Semites. A violent con- 

 flict between Germans and Czechs took place in 

 August at Cilli, Styria, where the Slovenes had 

 arranged a Slav festival of fraternization, but 

 the Germans drove out the Czechs who came 

 to attend it. After a new Ausgleich with Hun- 

 gary was concluded and promulgated in virtue 

 of paragraph 14 and a heavy additional duty was 

 laid on sugar the popular agitation against the 

 Government became more incontrollable in spite 

 of press confiscations and the suppression of pub- 

 lic meetings. The Socialists organized demon- 

 strations in Vienna, Gratz, and other towns, in 

 which cries for a republic were heard. The rais- 

 ing of the sugar duty from 12J to 20 kreutzers 

 a kilogramme and the prohibition of the sale of 

 saccharine, a substitute much used by the poor, 

 roused discontent even among the Czech work- 

 ing people. The Germans and Liberals encour- 

 aged and supported the Socialist demonstrations, 

 and even the Anti-Semites echoed the outcry 

 against this oppressive tax. In some of the 

 manufacturing centers women took part in the 

 street demonstrations, an unwonted spectacle in 

 Austria. Hundreds of newspapers were sup- 

 pressed because they denounced the imposition 

 of the sugar duty without the sanction of Par- 

 liament as unconstitutional. Municipal councils 

 and chambers of commerce gave their approba- 

 tion to the agitation against the Government. 

 In Salzburg blood was shed in conflicts between 

 the populace and the military, which lasted sev- 

 eral days. Risings occurred in Carinthia at 

 Klagenfurt. In northern Bohemia many Ger- 

 mans were wounded, and some were killed in 

 riots at Graslitz and Asch. On Sept. 23 the min- 

 isters resolved to resign in a body. 



Hungary. The Hungarian Parliament con- 

 sists of a House of Magnates, in which 18 arch- 

 dukes, 228 nobles, 44 archbishops, bishops, and 

 other prelates of the Roman and Greek churches, 

 12 representatives of the Protestant communi- 

 ties, 79 life members appointed by the King or 

 chosen by the house, 17 official members, and 3 

 delegates of Croatia- Slavonia, and the House of 

 Representatives, composed of 453 members, 413 

 elected in Hungarian and Transylvanian towns 



