SLAVS IN AMERICA 171 



own form of language and their own newspapers and press 

 been allowed by law in Russia. Nearly every Ruthenian 

 author in the empire has written his chief works in Great 

 Russian, because denied the use of his own language. They 

 are also spread throughout the Provinces of Lublin, in Poland; 

 Galicia and Bukovina, in Austria ; and the Counties of Szepes, 

 Saros, Abauj, Zemplin, Ung, Marmos, and Bereg, in Hun- 

 gary. They have had an opportunity to develop in Austria 

 and also in Hungary. In the latter country they are closely 

 allied with the Slovaks, and many of them speak the Slovak 

 language. They are all of the Greek Rite, and with the except- 

 tion of those in Russia and Bukovina are Catholics. They 

 use the Russian alphabet for their language, and in Bukovina 

 and a portion of Galicia have a phonetic spelHng, thus differ- 

 ing largely from Great Russian, even in words that are com- 

 mon to both. 



Their immigration to America commenced in 1880 as la- 

 borers in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and has 

 steadily increased ever since. Although they were the poorest 

 class of peasants and laborers, illiterate for the most part 

 and unable to grasp the English language or American cus- 

 toms when they arrived, they have rapidly risen in the scale of 

 prosperity and are now rivalling the other nationalities in 

 progress. Greek Ruthenian churches and institutions are 

 being established upon a substantial basis, and their clergy and 

 schools are steadily advancing. They are scattered all over 

 the United States, and there are now (1911) between 480,000 

 and 500,000 of them, counting immigrants and native born. 

 Their immigration for the past five years has been as fol- 

 lows : 1907, 24,081; 1908, 12,361; 1909, 15,808; 1910, 27,907; 

 191 1, 17,724; being an average of 20,000 a year. They have 

 chiefly settled in the State of Pennsylvania, over half of them 

 being there ; but Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois 

 have large numbers of them. The Greek Rite in the Slavonic 

 language is firmly established through them in the United 

 States, but they suffer greatly from Russian Orthodox en- 

 deavors to lead them from the Catholic Church, as well as 

 from frequent internal dissensions (chiefly of an old-world 

 political nature) among themselves. They have 152 Greek 

 Catholic churches, with a Greek clergy consisting of a Greek 

 Catholic bishop who has his seat at Philadelphia, but with- 



