SLAVS IN AMERICA 



THE Slavic races have sent large numbers of their people 

 to the United States and Canada, and this immigration 

 is coming every year in increasing numbers. The 

 earliest immigration began before the war of the States, but 

 within the past thirty years it has become so great as quite to 

 overshadow the Irish and German immigration of the earlier 

 decades. For two-thirds of that period no accurate figures of 

 tongues and nationalities were kept, the immigrants being 

 merely credited to the political governments or countries from 

 which they came, but within the past twelve years more accu- 

 rate data have been preserved. During these years ( 1899- 

 1910) the total immigration into the United States has been 

 about 10,000,000 in round numbers, and of these the Slavs 

 have formed about 22 per cent (actually 2,117,240), to say 

 nothing of the increase of native-born Slavs in this country 

 during that period, as well as the numbers of the earlier ar- 

 rivals. Reliable estimates compiled from the various racial 

 sources show that there are from five and a half to six mil- 

 lions of Slavs in the United States, including the native-bom 

 of Slavic parents. We are generally unaware of these facts, 

 because the Slavs are less conspicuous among us than the Ital- 

 ians, Germans, or Jews ; their languages and their history are 

 unfamiliar and remote, besides they are not so massed in the 

 great cities of this country. 



I. — Bohemians 



These people ought really to be called Chekh {Czech), but 

 are named Bohemians after the aboriginal tribe of the Boii, 

 who dwelt in Bohemia in Roman times. By a curious perver- 

 sion of language, on account of various gypsies who about 

 two centuries ago travelled westward across Bohemia and 

 thereby came to be known in France as "Bohemians," the 



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