Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/31

Rh and Lithuanians, when her dominion extended from the Oder to the Don and from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the position of the Polish serf was as unenviable as it is to-day. Poland was an oligarchy in which the ruling nobles and their miserable serfs had no bond of sympathy. There was no Polish middle class to carry on commerce and trade, to serve as a connecting link between the two widely separated classes. Commerce and trade were in the hands of foreigners, chiefly Jews. The Pacta Conventa (1572) or, as it has been called, the Polish Magna Charta, was in no sense a charter of the liberties of the people. It is true that it curtailed the power of the king and made him a mere figurehead, but it greatly increased the power of the nobles and, if anything, added to the misery of the peasants. These conditions made impossible a universal national feeling, and paved the way for Poland's downfall.

No doubt Russian treatment of Polish landowners and nobles has been unjust, even cruel, but it must be remembered that the first real freedom the Polish serf ever enjoyed he received from his Russian masters. Russia abolished serfdom and, after the Polish insurrection of 1863, the Czar sought to conciliate the Polish peasant class by certain agrarian reforms. By these measures the peasants settled upon land and were made owners, the government compensating the landlord and exacting from the peasant a small sum yearly until the amount advanced was paid. Following the suppression of the revolt, wholesale confiscation placed upon the market thousands of acres of good farming land, and in a great measure broke up the large estates which kept the peasant a serf, even after he was declared free. Unfortunately for the Polish peasant, he was usually too poor to buy any of the land thus placed in the market.

But the conciliatory policy of Czar Alexander II. is not favored by the present ruler. His efforts at Russification are aggressive and persistent. It is to America that the Pole looks as the only land likely to give him a chance. The Polish immigrants possess the general characteristics of the Slavs. They are of medium height or very slightly below it, very strongly built, with the broad face and brachycephalic head of the Slav type. Their complexion shows all gradations from the blue eyes and light hair in the Slavs of the north to the pronounced brunette type of the southern Poles. Five sixths of the male Polish immigrants are unskilled laborers. They are very willing to work and are especially useful in the mines, mills, manufacturing concerns and great works of construction.

The geographical distribution of Poles arrived in America during the year ended June 30, 1902, is shown below: