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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



have come to the shores of America, and 

 our PoHsh immigrant population living 

 today ranges around three million. It is 

 said that if the people of Polish ancestry 

 in the United States were massed to- 

 gether they could practically duplicate 

 the population of New England. In 

 Pennsylvania one inhabitant out of every 

 twelve has Polish blood in his veins ; in 

 New York one out of fourteen, and in 

 Massachusetts one out of ten. In Wis- 

 consin and Michigan every eighth person 

 is of Polish descent. 



POLISH IMMIGRANTS 



Chicago is said to have more Poles in 

 it than any other city in the world ex- 

 cept Warsaw and possibly Lodz. Cleve- 

 land has more than 40,000 Polish resi- 

 dents, yet New York Pittsburgh, Phila- 

 delphia, Buffalo, Mihvaukee, and Detroit 

 all have Polish colonies larger than Cleve- 

 land's. 



Home-ownership seems to be an as- 

 piration of the iVmerican Pole ; many of 

 them start to buy houses on the instal- 

 ment plan before they begin to speak 

 English. With large families and small 

 incomes, they are yet more frequently 

 home-buyers than native-born Americans 

 with smaller families and larger incomes. 



Reared in regions where the battle of 

 life is less one for comfort than one for 

 existence, what seems a bare necessity to 

 the American laboring man may appear 

 a great luxury to the immigrant Polish 

 peasant : consequently they can save on 

 small wages. 



Although in Europe by far the ma- 

 jority of the Poles are engaged in agri- 

 culture, in America they generally settle 

 in the cities. However, many small Po- 

 lish colonies have been started in New 

 England and elsewhere. Most of the 

 colonists buy abandoned farming lands, 



and not only manage to coax a living out 

 of the soil where Americans before them 

 could not get it, but they actually, in 

 many instances, succeed in converting the 

 waste place of yesterday into fields of 

 plenty. 



A VICTIM OF INDIVIDUALISM 



Poland disappeared from the family 

 of nations a victim of her own individual- 

 ism. Although they constituted only one- 

 twentieth of the population, the nobles 

 arrogated to themselves the right of rul- 

 ing everything. Granting no form of 

 freedom to the peasantry, they yet loved 

 their own freedom so excessively that 

 nothing could be done without the unani- 

 mous consent of the nobles. There was 

 no such a thing as the rule of the ma- 

 jority. 



A single one of a thousand nobles 

 might set at nought the will of the other 

 999. Unanimous consent could seldom 

 be obtained for any vital proposition, and 

 so Poland grew weak while Russia and 

 Prussia and Austria were growing strong. 

 In an age when international law was 

 writ in the one phrase, "Let him take who 

 has the power, and let him keep who 

 can," the growing weakness of Poland 

 and the growing strength of the other 

 countries very naturally resulted in Po- 

 land's fall. 



Having lost her all, Poland hailed ther 

 rise of Napoleon as an opportunity to 

 regain it. Tens of thousands of her peo-- 

 pie enlisted under the banner of the great 

 Corsican, and Poland poured out un- 

 stintedly of her resources of men, money, 

 and munitions to aid the cause of the 

 France that they hoped would deliver 

 her. But when Napoleon retreated from 

 Moscow the hopes of Poland declined, 

 and Waterloo finally replaced tangible 

 hope with an intangible dream. 



The Indexes for Volumes XXV and XXVI of the National Gb;ographic 

 Magazinl may be secured by any member of the Society desiring them. 



