92 
FIFTEENTH REPORT. 
teen papers including three dailies; 1500 locals with 130,000 members 
and at the last election 400,000 votes were cast. They are socialists be- 
cause that is against the government and the church, but when they get 
to this country they do not stick very well. And there are in Bohemia, 
and some other countries already two socialist parties— nationalists 
and internationalists and the nationalists are growing rapidly. A gen- 
eration ago there were almost no schools in Bohemia except German and 
all business was done in German. Now where there is a majority of Bo- 
hemians in a district there are Bohemian schools supported at public ex- 
pense, but in minority towns only German schools are provided. To meet 
this there is a great educational organization for collecting money and 
maintaining private Bohemian schools in all minority towns and vil- 
lages. On our ship going to Bohemia we took two collections for this 
organization. In the restaurants in Prague the head waiter or pro- 
prietor has a collection box which he passes to the patrons for this 
"another of schools” as it is called. The result of all these activities 
is that German is gradually being driven out of the country. One 
rarely hears Bohemian on the streets of Prague whereas it is said that 
ten years ago one heard little else. Fathers we’re raised to speak German 
but teach their children Bohemian instead. I heard of one business 
man last summer who expressed great pride in the fact that he had 
been a successful business man and did not know any German, thus 
proving the change that had taken place. A German cannot get food in 
a Bohemian restaurant unless he speaks Bohemian, though all the 
waiters know German. All older people speak German equally as well 
as Bohemian, but the younger very little, and even at the University of 
Prague where until 1882 the work was all German, now the graduates 
do not know German well, and the Bohemian part of the University is 
more than twice as large as the German. It is unquestionably a dis- 
advantage for a country of less than seven millions to cut itself off 
from the advantages of German literature and science, but those who 
appreciate the disadvantage are as hostile to German as the more emo- 
tional, and deliberately assume the cost for the freedom of the spirit. 
When we remember that the prestige is on the side of the German we 
see in this movement the same indifference to personal success and 
devotion that characterizes the socialist. While Bohemians make good 
American citizens, they bring their traditions with them. No child 
would dare to answer its parents in anything but Bohemian. I have 
found this to be universally the case. With German children much 
more English is used. Perhaps the most striking development in 
America is the organized propaganda of freethinking. Ninety-seven 
per cent of the Bohemians are nominal catholics when they arrive, but 
at least sixty-six per cent of those in the country are militant free- 
thinkers. Their attitude towards religion, especially the catholic church 
is very similar to that of the socialists, but that does not make them 
any more sympathetic with each other. A year ago I was invited to 
give a lecture in Chicago on Commenius in a Presbyterian church. I 
was very widely advertised, but neither the freethinker daily nor the 
socialist daily would give any notice of it, because it was to be in a 
church, though T knew the editors of both personally, and the freethinker, 
who is a graduate of the University of Michigan attended the lecture. 
I repeated the lecture in a public school hall and both advertised me. 
