Page:Slavs on southern farms (1914).pdf/11

 numbers are located in the States of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Virginia. Possibly the total number of Slavish farm operators in the United States, composed chiefly of Poles, Bohemians, and Slovaks, will largely exceed 100,000.

Before we proceed further, who are the Slavs?

Prof. Oscar Peschel, of Leipzig, says they are out of the great Indo-European family of the Letto-Slavonic stem of the north European Aryan group. He places their origin in the “region of the Danube.” Prof. Lubor Niederle, of the Bohemian University at Prague, substantiates this in his statement that the Slavs are of “central European origin.” Prof. S. Zaborowski-Moindron, of the Ecolé d’Anthropologie, at Paris, cites their origin as ‘north of the Carpathians, where, through ancient usage, they were called Veneti, which people penetrated as far north as the Baltic littoral at a very remote period and were the propogatorspropagators [sic] of the rite of cremation.”

In describing the physical appearance of the Slavs, Prof. Niederle, who is the author of Slovanský Svet, says:

He divides the Slavs of to-day into the seven following groups:

Grouping all of these peoples together, Prof. Niederle estimates that in 1910 there were in the world more than 150,000,000 Slavs. Of this number he says 70 per cent are of the Russian stem, 13 per cent Poles, 7 per cent Bohemians and Slovaks, 4 per cent Bulgarians, and comparatively few Slovenians, Croatians, Servians and other Slavish people. He estimates that in the United States we have about 1,500,000 Poles, about 500,000 Slovaks, possibly 300,000 Bohemians, about 300,000 Croatians and Servians, 100,000 Slovenians, and only comparatively few Bulgarians. Although not so stated by Prof. Niederle, there are also at least 300,000 Slavs of the Russian stem in the United States.

Turning to closer consideration of these several races, the large number of Poles found in the United States makes it interesting to consider them rather closely, especially with regard to such tendencies as they may exhibit toward leaving the industrial centers and settling on the land. This, together with a brief account of the Slovak farmers in Arkansas, the Bohemian farmers in Texas, and the Bohemian and Slovak farmers in the southside Virginia counties will be helpful in understanding possibly a little better our Slavish farmers, and will show us one method by which the idle acres of the South can be turned into highly productive and valuable agricultural areas.