Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/32

28 {| Total Poles Landed.
 * State
 * Number of Poles
 * colspan=2|Ratio to
 * colspan=2|Ratio to
 * colspan=2|Ratio to
 * width=300|
 * width=60|
 * rowspan=13 width=60|
 * width=40|
 * width=60|
 * Pennsylvania
 * 21,929
 * 32
 * per cent.
 * New York
 * 14,364
 * 21
 * Illinois
 * 8,818
 * 11
 * Massachusetts
 * 5,916
 * 8
 * New Jersey
 * 5,689
 * 8
 * Connecticut
 * 3,299
 * 5
 * Ohio
 * 2,502
 * 4
 * Michigan
 * 1,899
 * 3
 * Wisconsin
 * 1,059
 * 2
 * All other states
 * 4,225
 * 6
 * Total
 * 69,620
 * 100
 * per cent.
 * }
 * Michigan
 * 1,899
 * 3
 * Wisconsin
 * 1,059
 * 2
 * All other states
 * 4,225
 * 6
 * Total
 * 69,620
 * 100
 * per cent.
 * }
 * Total
 * 69,620
 * 100
 * per cent.
 * }
 * per cent.
 * }
 * }

There are two factors that more than any others tend to preserve the purity of a race. They are the inaccessibility and the uninviting nature of the country it inhabits. Thus, races occupying a barren mountainous country or a country covered by trackless forest and impassable marshland are apt to be of purer racial type than the races living upon the great natural highways of commerce and trade or occupying territory rich enough to be inviting to covetous eyes. These factors have had much to do with the preservation of the purely Slavic type as represented by the Slovaks. This people occupies the rough mountainous country on the Hungarian side of the Carpathians, well back from the valley of the Danube.

The Slovak is very closely allied racially to the Bohemian or Czech. Their languages are similar, the Slovak being the more primitive and more like the old Slav. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Slovaks used the Bohemian language for all printed or written forms, but about that time a separatist movement began and an effort was made to develop a Slovak literature. This movement was unfortunate for both Czech and Slovak, because they had to resist the same natural enemies—aggressive Pan-Germanism on the one side, and the ever-intrusive Magyar on the other.

Physically, the Slovaks are a sturdy stock, a little taller than the Poles. The great majority of the men are unskilled laborers. The following table indicates how the Slovaks were distributed for the year ended June 30, 1902: