Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/127

 than any other part of Poland, and this reform left the peasants owners of abnormally small lots of land. As late as forty years ago Galicia's population was also the most ignorant in all Poland, though it must be said to the credit of the Galician Land Diet that during the last fifty years of the country's autonomy it made the fostering of the education of the masses its chief aim. Two-thirds of the country's expenditure throughout this period were applied towards the improvement of public education, particularly of the primary schools which were Polish in the Polish and Ruthenian in the Ruthenian part of the country. In this way Galicia out-distanced Russian Poland in the education of the masses as far back' as twenty years ago. But in spite of considerable progress the unfavourable economic condition of the small landowner in this over-populated country remained a very unhealthy source of political fermentation. The peasant reform produced not only a class of small landowners but also a very numerous landless proletariate. Here lies the reason why the number of emigrants from Poland has been so great in recent times. Emigration in large masses began in German Poland in the seventies and was rapidly followed by emigrations from the Russian and Austrian parts of the country. As a result the Polish population in the United States to-day numbers some three-and-a-half millions, to which total must be added some hundreds of thousands of Poles in Southern Brazil and other oversea countries. The rapid development of German industries attracted a large portion of the emigrants from German Poland to the German mines and factories in the west of the Empire, particularly in