AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



506 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



*ta 



*l . .ft ^-***"1 . * 



German 

 Magyar ^ 

 Rumanian 



Bohemian 



Croato-Serbian 



Slovenian 



Ruthenian 



ftftlian 



Polish 



RACIAL MAP OF THE OLD DUAL MONARCHY 

 In few other civilized countries was there greater confusion of tongues. 



miles the Danube is navigable for large ves- 

 sels, and its tributaries, with the other inde- 

 pendent river systems, furnish many hundreds 

 of miles in addition. As water rates for ship- 

 ping are considerably lower than rail rates, 

 these rivers have played a very important 

 part in the economic life of the country. 

 Trieste, which was Austria's seaport, and Fiume, 

 Hungary's outlet, rank in tonnage with such 

 others as Boston, Baltimore, Montreal, Victoria 

 (B. C.), Bordeaux and Copenhagen. 



By Rail. But Austria-Hungary was by no 

 means dependent on its rivers for inland trans- 

 portation for there were over 29,000 miles of 

 railway in the country. All the principal cities 

 and towns were easy of access by rail. It was 

 the policy of the government to buy up the 

 railroad lines, and before the war it owned over 

 half of the mileage of Austria and seven-eighths 

 of that of Hungary. 



Peoples and Languages. The strangest thing 

 about this monarchy which was one country in 

 name only was the number of peoples differing 

 in race, language and traditions who comprised 

 it. The United States and Canada have re- 

 ceived by immigration representatives of 

 many nations, some of them in large numbers, 

 but the cases are not at all similar. The 

 much-used phrase of the "melting-pot" ex- 

 presses very truly the fact that no matter how 



different these American new-comers may be, 

 they all tend within a few years or at most a 

 generation to become citizens of their adopted 

 country. But in Austria-Hungary that was not 

 true. Each race is supreme in its own portion 

 of the country. It has resisted for years the 

 influences of the differing peoples roundabout, 

 and clings closely to its own language and 

 customs. 



Most numerous of all the peoples are the 

 Slavs, who made up forty-seven per cent of 

 the whole population; but they are divided 

 into so many branches differing from each 

 other in language, in manners and in customs 

 that only a student of races would recognize 

 that they are one people (see SLAV). Bohemia, 

 Moravia, Carniola, Galicia, Dalmatia, Croatia, 

 Slavonia and Northern Hungary are largely 

 Slavic, while the Germans, who comprised 

 twenty-three per cent of the total inhabitants, 

 made up almost the entire population of Upper 

 and Lower Austria, and are present in smaller 

 numbers in almost every part of the country. 

 Because Upper and Lower Austria are German, 

 the official language of the Austrian Empire 

 was German. 



In Hungary, however, the Magyars comprised 

 over half of the population of the kingdom, 

 and Magyar is therefore the official tongue 

 (see MAGYARS). A young man in any of the 



