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 POLES

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POLES

Polish immigrantg of a succeeding generation. At the solicitation of Bishop Carroll a number of Pohsh priests, all former members of the disbanded Society of Jesus, came to .Ajnerica; one of the most prominent of these was Father Francis Dzierozjnski. In the thirties several Polish Franciscan Fathers were labouring in the United States, among whom the most prominent was Father Anthony Rossadowski, chap- lain in the Polish army in the Revolution of 1830. Father Caspar Matoga, who came to the United States in 1848, and completed his studies at Fordham, was the first Polish priest to be ordained in the United States.

Broadly speaking, the causes of Polish Lmmigra- tion have been political, religious, and economic. While economic conditions have been the direct cause, it must be borne in mind that the indirect causes, political and religious, are quite as potent as the economic. Prussianizing, which lately has as- sumed a religious as well as a political aspect, renders the progress of Prussian Poland distasteful to the Poles, because whatever progress is made must be along Prussian Unes. The Kultiirkampf gave the American Poles many of their noblest priests, through whose influence thousands of Poles came to America. While Prussianizing by means of class legislation, expropriation, and colonization has not been very rapid, its methods have been attended with a certain measure of success. The economic prosperity of Western Germany has checked the emigration of Prussian Poles from the empire, and the Poles al- ready form an important and growing part of the population of Westphalia and the Rhenish prov- inces.

Russian Poland experiences the full force of miUtarism, but still more important as a cause of emigration is the state of terrorism in the great manu- facturing districts of Russian Poland, aggravated by the Russo-Japanese War. The mentally more alert are emigrating from Russian Poland, mostly young men who, under the constant strain of Govern- ment repression, are the first to be drawn into the revolutionarj' propaganda and have developed ex- aggerated notions concerning social wrongs. It is mostly from this class that Socialism in America draws its Polish recruits. A condition responsible for much of the emigration from Poland is the per- secution of the Jews in Russia proper, and the Govern- ment's policy of concentrating its Jewish problem within "the Kingdom", which has been constituted a vast pale whither the Jews are being forced until they are overflowing into Galicia. By granting autonomy to communities in which the Jews are numerically strong, the Government is effectually expatriating the Poles by what amounts to dis- franchisement, and thus Polish progress is blocked. The Poles were never a commercial people, and under present conditions they abandon all trade and com- merce to the Jews. About 35 per cent of the population of Warsaw and about 31 per cent of that of Cracow are Jews. They have control of Poland's industrj-, commerce, and agriculture. Industrj' receives poor reward, taxation of the poor is oppressive, and education in Russian Poland is positively discouraged. Since the beginnings of Galician emigration land values in Galicia have ad- vanced fourfold. The abandonment of the feudal system, whereby one child received the family hold- ing intact, the decreasing death-rate, and the high birth-rate, have cut the peasant's acre into tiny patche.s, which under most careful cultivation are insufficient for a population of 241 to the square mile, especially in Western Galicia. Polish emigra- tion is constantly stimulated by the steamship agencies, which form a network of newspapers, petty officials, and innkeepers; cheapness of trans- portation and the accounts from America of better

conditions add greatly to its tide. The annual emi- gration to the industrial regions of Germany tends to mitigate the extreme poverty of the peasants, which heretofore rendered emigration impossible. Poverty and not patriotism is at the bottom of all present- day Polish emigration. Memories of European conditions are an important factor in causing the Poles in the United States to forget any inten- tion they may have had of returning to the mother country.

Distribution and Statistics. — The immigration of the PoUsh masses began in 1854. In 1851 Father Leopold Moczygemba, a Franciscan, came to America and soon after induced nearly one hundred families from Upper Silesia to come to Texas. They first came by sailing vessels to Galveston and brought with them all their possessions, their tools and ploughs; indeed, even the bell and great cross in the village church were brought to the New \\'orld, and still remain in the church in Panna Maria, Texas, lasting memorials of the faith of the early pioneers. In 1855 the church in Panna Maria was jjuilt, the first Polish church in America. Within a few years ten little colonies had been established in Texas, and during the same period colonies were founded in Parisville, Michigan, and Polonia, Wisconsin, and in 18(52 a parish was being organized at Milwaukee. In 1870 there were twenty Polish settlements in ten parishes in the States of Texas, ^lichigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, In- diana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. It was to the virgin lands of Michigan, Wisconsin, and southern Illinois, and to the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Illinois that the)- went in greatest numbers. The number of Polish priests grew from 25 in 1870 to 79 in 1877. The total Polish population in the United States did not exceed 40,000 in 1870, of whom fully a fourth were in Chicago alone. While the immigra- tion of the Polish masses had its distinct beginning in 1854, and the number of immigrants was increased by the disastrous Revolution of 1863, it was not until after the Franco-Prussian War, and until after the United States began to recover from the effects of the Civil War, that it became a mighty stream: and al- though Prussian Poland has long ceased to send more than a modicum, the stream is gaining volume with each passing month.

The financial panic of 1873 checked for a brief period the growing immigration. In 1875 the Poles in the United States numbered nearly 150,000, of which number nearly 20,000 were in Chicago, which as early as 1866 had become and still remains the metropolis of this the fourth division of Poland, as the Polish communitv in America is called bv the Poles. In 1889 they had 132 churches, 126 priests, and 122 schools, nearly all conducted by the Felician Sisters and the School Sisters of Xotre Dame. Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Milwaukee, in addition to Chicago, had become important Polish centres as early as ISSO. The vast majority, probably 80 per cent of all Polish immigration from 1854 to 1890, was from Prussian Poland. Among them were many Cassubians from West Prussia who, living in what was for centuries a borderland between Poland and the domains of the Teutonic Knights, were much affected by Prussian influence. ViTiile there is no small number of these Cassubians in parishes noted as German in the official directory, they have of late years, both in Poland and America, regained their national consciousness and have fully entered into the life of t he Polish-.\merican community. From the so-called Mazurenland (Masuria) in north- ern Prussia we have a few thousand Polish Lutherans who but for their jargon of Prussianized Poli.sh are lost to Poland. Between them and the Poles no community of interests exists either ih America or Poland. There are several isolated colonies of these Masurians in Wisconsin and Minnesota.