Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule/The Bohemians as Immigrants

by Emily Greene Balch

ADDENDA

 

THE BOHEMIANS AS IMMIGRANTS

 

By Emily Greene Balch, Professor of Economics at Wellesley College^[1]

 

IN some cities, as for instance Cedar Rapids, and in some states, as for instance Nebraska, Bohemians are a large enough element in the population to be fairly well known; but they are not so numerous in the United States as a whole, as to be clearly present to the minds of most people. New Yorkers may have seen with interest the National Hall of the Bohemians, Clevelanders may be familiar with the Schauffler Missionary Training School, persons familiar with industrial conditions in Chicago may be aware of the great Bohemian colony there, the largest in the country; but in general if people know anything about Bohemians they probably “know a great many things that aren’t so,” misled by the fact that the French word for Gipsies is Bohemians, much as our word for the American aborigines is Indian.

Yet from the colonial period individual Bohemians have come to this country, and in 1906, the latest year for which I have estimates, the Bohemian group was put at a round half-million.

Some of these early settlers are picturesque and not unimportant figures like Heřman and Phillipse, but it was not till the disturbed period of 1848 that Bohemians came to this country in appreciable numbers. At this time there was a triple ferment in Bohemia: first, a desire for political independence; second, a resurrection of national self-consciousness symbolized by the revival of the Bohemian language, the use of which among cultivated people had been abandoned for German; and third, a spirit of religious questioning and vehement challenge of current Christianity, largely due to reaction against the influence of a corrupt Austrian clericalism.

Another possible influence was the discovery of gold in California in 1849, which is said to have brought Bohemian gold-seekers and to have stimulated the activity of ship agents. The census of 1850 mentions 87 natives of Austria (out of 946 in the United States) as then in California; these were probably Bohemians. Throughout the fifties and early sixties there was a pretty steady outflow from Bohemia, most of it directed to the United States. This early emigration was a movement of settlers, whole families going together.

With 1867 came a fresh impulse to emigration. Besides the newly granted right to emigrate freely, the disastrous war with Prussia in 1866 gave added reasons for going, while in the United States the Civil War was over and everything invited the settier.

The earliest colony of Bohemians was in St. Louis, where in 1854 they had already established a Catholic church, and this city has always remained an influential Bohemian centre.

More important, however, was the movement to the states further West—the largest numbers scttling in Wisconsin, later Iowa, later Nebraska and the two Dakotas, though a considerable settlement also grew up in Cleveland. In general, however, in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois land was already too dear for the newcomers, and they continually settled further west as the years went on In the early days they either went overland from the Eastern ports or up the Mississippi River. One of the reasons for so many Bohemians as well as Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, and Belgians being attracted to Wisconsin was undoubtedly the attitude of that state toward immigration. A fact that is easily forgotten in the present state of feeling in regard to immigration is the eager and official solicitation of immigrants that was carried on for years by various states. Wisconsin, like many other states, appointed a Commissioner of Immigration to stimulate the inflow. In 1852 the first man to fill this office reported to the Governor that he had been in New York distributing pamphlets in English, German, Norwegian, and Dutch, describing the resources of the state.

After four years this state canvass for immigrants was suspended for a time, but in 1864 the Wisconsin Legislature memorialized Congress for the passage of national laws to encourage foreign imnigration on the ground that labor was scarce, owing to the war, and that wages had more than doubled. Whether or not as a consequence of this request, Congress did in the same year pass an act to encourage immigration, which, however, was repealed in March, 1868.

Again, in 1879, Wisconsin established a State Board of Immigration to increase and stimulate immigration, with authority to disseminate information. The official circulars mentioned as inducements the following points: climate, rich lands at a noininal price, free schools and a free university, equality before the law, religious liberty, no imprisonment for debt, and liberal exemption from seizure by a creditor, suffrage and the right to be elected to any office but that of governor or lieutenant-governor on one year’s residence, whether a citizen or not (intention to become one having been declared); and full eligibility to office for all actual citizens. “There is never an election in the state,” one circular continues, " that does not put some, and often very many, foreign-born citizens into office. Indeed, there is no such thing as a foreigner in Wisconsin, save in the mere accident of birthplace; for men coming here and entering into the active duties of life identify themselves with the state and her interests, and are to all intents and purposes American.” We are told “The language above used is, except in rhetoric, identical” with that in an edition of 1884.

Besides this direct encouragement by the state “a similar canvass was maintained by counties and land companies, and at a later stage by railway companies, some of them sending agents to travel in Europe.” Of such solicitation at the very beginning of Bohemian immigration I found tradition still mindful in the old country. Thus immigrants have felt themselves directly and officially invited and urged to come, and it is not surprising that one often finds them aggrieved and hurt at the tone of too many current references making foreigners synonymous with everything that is unwelcome.

Many of the Bohemians were pioneers in the unbroken wilderness, and a very large part were farmers. A large proportion, however, had trades, and this is characteristic of Bohemian immigration in general. The common estimate is that onehalf of the Bohemians in the country are living in country places, occupicd either with farming or with some one of the various employments incident to rural life, from shoemaking to keeping store or acting as notary public. If the comparison be extended to all groups of foreign parentage, Bohernia shows a larger proportion engaged in agriculture than any foreign countries except Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, surpassing even Germany and Sweden. It is interesting to note that Italy has a very low rank in this regard; even Poland and Russia surpass hier, lowered as their place is by the large non-agricultural Jewish element, and only Hungary is below her.

As to the quality of Slavic farming, one naturally hears different reports. I suspect that the American often thinks the Pole or Bohemian a poor farmer because he works on a different plan, while the foreigner, used to small, intensive farming, thinks Yankees slovenly and wasteful. Especially when he takes up old, worn-out farm lands, he has small respect for the methods of his predecessor, who, he says, “robbed the soil.”

The American business agent of a Bohemian farming paper, already quoted, could not say enough in praise of the Bohemian farmers. They farmed better than the Americans. They invested freely in farm machinery. Nothing was too good or too big for them. In the eastern half of Butler County, Nebraska, there were seventeen big steam threshing outfits among Bohemians—something to which you could find nothing parallel in the same arca anywhere in the United States. The Bohemian paper of which he was agent had seven times more advertising of farm implements than any other paper in the United States, he said.

While the above statements are those of an interested party, all the available evidence points the same way. It would seem, moreover, as though in certain lines, new to us and familiar in Europe, the immigrant should be able to supply very valuable skill. This seems to be especially the case in the sugar-beet industry, in which the labor of Bohemians, who understand beet culture well, is much sought.

Of Bohemian women at work, nearly a quarter were in 1900 servants and waitresses, and more than another quarter workers at tailoring or in tobacco. This corresponds to the fact that many Bohemians in the cities are engaged in the two latter branches; many too are mechanics or tradespeople, often carrying on a small business of their own.

The Bohemians, like other Slavic groups in this country, are much given to organizing into societies. Many of their associations are small local affairs of the most various sorts. In a New York Bohemian paper I found a list of 95 local societies among this group of perhaps 43,000 people. Many were mere “pleasure clubs,” to use the current East Side phrase, while many were lodges of various of their great “national” societies. Of these large national societies the most remarkable is the society founded by the Bohemians at St. Louis in 1854, under the name of the BohemianSlavonic Benevolent Society, or as it is commonly called, by the initials of this name in the vernacular, the Č. S. P. S. In the religious controversies which soon divided American Bohemians into two camps, this came to represent the free-thinking, anti-Catholic side. It numbers about 25,000 members.

The Sokols, which correspond to the German “Turnerbunds” or gymnastic societies, are as popular and widespread as they are desirable. They give opportunity for exercise dignified by a sense of the relation between good physical condition and readiness for service to one’s country. Women and children, as well as the men, have their own divisions, classes, and uniforms, and the Sokol exhibitions are important and very pretty social events. In Prague, in the summer of 1906, the Bohemian Sokols had an anniversary international meet, at which the American societies were also represented, and performed evolutions, literally in their thousands, in the open air.

Theatricals, whether given in some local hall or in a regular theatre hired for the occasion, are, as in Europe, a favorite employment for Sunday afternoons or evenings. Classic pieces, both literary and operatic, are much enjoyed; for instance, among the Bohemians, Smetana’s opera, “The Bartered Bride,” is often given. On the other hand, one will see a very sinple spontaneous little exhibition given with the greatest abandon and delight by a club of hard-worked, elderly women, whose triumphs are hugely enjoyed by their families and neighbors. It is an especial pleasure to them to reproduce the pretty costumes of their old-world youth. Worthy of especial mention are the club called Snaha (Endeavor), of Bohemian professional women in Chicago, and the clubs organized for reading and study among Socialists of different nationalities.

There are numerous Bohemian papers and periodicals, including the Bohemian “Hospodář” (“Farmer”) of Omaha and the “Ženské Listy” of Chicago, the latter being an organ of a woman’s society, printed as well as edited by women. It is not devoted to “beauty lessons” and “household hints,” but to efforts toward woman’s suffrage and the " uplifting of the mental attitude of working-women.” Its 6,000 subscribers include distinguished Bohemians all over the country, men as well as women.

In religion the Roman Catholics claim a large number of Bohemians, but there is a substantial Protestant minority; outside the church fold is the numerous and very interesting group of Free-Thinkers.

The Bohemians are among the most literate of our immigrants. Taking the data for 1900, which I happen to have worked out, we find that of immigrants of all nationalities of fourteen years and over, those not able to both read and write were 24.2 per cent.; among the Germans 5.8 per cent.; among the Bohemians and Moravians only 3.0 per cent.; among Scandinavians, under 0.8 per cent. Certainly to supply only about one-half as many illiterates per hundred as the Germans is a notable record.

All of this is quite borne out by the impression one gets of Bohemians both in the United States and in Bohemia. In development and conditions they rank with the immigrant from northwestern Europe. The struggle with the Germans is in a sense the master-thread in their whole history, and this contact, even though inimical, has meant interpenetration and rapprochement. No other Slavic nationality is more self-conscious and patriotic, not to say chauvinistic, in its national feeling, and at the same time none begins to be so permeated with general European culture and so advanced economically.

As to character, if it is impossible to indict a whole people, so is it impossible to draw a portrait of such a collective group. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that one characteristic of the countrymen of Smetana and Dvořák is their noble gift for music. Their sense of color, too, is very marked, and they, beyand all people I know, love the dance. Yet with all their “gemüthlich” and temperamental qualities I find them reserved, delicate, shy, intensely family-loving, cherishing privacy.

The Bohemians are a people of high conscientiousness, and by nature loyal. In the Civil War their anti-slavery feeling and their devotion to their new country both were shown, and the first company that went from Chicago to fight for the Union is said to have been a Lincoln Rifle Company that some young men of that nationality had organized in 1860. The dominating feature in the great Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago is the soldiers’ monument, just such a monument as stands on every village common in New England; and perhaps nothing so much as this visible sign of blood shed in the same cause bridges the difference of national feeling.

They are interested in ideas for their own sake, as are the Latin peoples, and especially in questions of religion. The older people love their past, their language, their old home, yet they cannot hand on these interests in their pristine intensity to the younger people, absorbed in the life about them, dropping their Bohemian speech and ways and gradually, only gradually, completing the transition to the New World and its ways.

Note.—I have to thank the publishers of my book, Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens, for permission to borrow here and there from its pages.

 

1. Author of “Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens.” Miss Balch studied the Slav in the United States and “at the source,” in Europe.

 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA