Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/18

 of each village were able to help the agricultural and industrial developments of the Czechoslovak lands. The banks are actively interested in commerce; they established new industrial and commercial enterprises. Thus the Živnostenská Bank of Prague builds sugar mills in the Balkans and undertakes the sale of the entire production of 26 factories.

All the Czech banks operate annually with a capital of five billion crowns. It was this concentration of wealth which enabled them to hold their own in competition with Great German banks.

There are no official statistical figures of the wealth and natural resources of Slovakia, for this country of 54,000 square kilometers was merged in Hungary, and the Magyars did not want the world to know the natural riches of the country oppressed by them. The figures given below are compiled with much labor from the Hungarian official statistics and give a fairly accurate picture of the economic conditions in that unfortunate land.

The relative density of population in Slovakia in 62.3 per square kilometre. In the county of Nitra it is 77.7 inhabitants per square kilometre. According to the Magyar statistics in 1910 there was in Slovakia 69 percent Slovaks, 18.8 percent Magyars and 9.7 percent of Germans. Even in Budapest the Magyars had to admit the presences of 25,168 Slovaks; of course the real number was much larger. The productive soil of Slovakia was 93.8 percent of the entire area, and of that 40 percent was arable, 19.3 percent was meadow land and 34.5 was in forests. The number of farms and their division into great and small estates was as follows:

The total value of the crops in the 11 principal Slovak counties in 1901 was 342,218,237 crowns. The following table indicates the production of the chief crops:

Slovakia is therefore an agricultural country, but at the same time it is more industrial than the rest of Hungary. Among the Slovaks the number of persons making their living out of agriculture was 65.7 per cent; in the rest of Hungary 67.4 percent. Industrial and commercial workers among the Slovaks number 22.1 percent and in the rest of Hungary 20 percent.

The underground wealth of Slovakia contains minerals of all species. In 1905 the production of iron ore in Slovakia was 8,971,612 quintals, whereas all rest of the Kingdom of Hungary produced in that year 7,631,972 quintals.

At the same time half of this ore was exported, since the primitive state of the iron industry could not utilize all the ore at home. The production of iron in 1905 in Slovakia was 2,285.328 quintals valued at 18,721,249 crowns. Iron ore is mined in 30 districts and smeltered in 21 districts. The future of the iron industry in Slovakia is very promising since the country possesses rich strata of coal. Most of the Hungarian coal is found in Slovakia. In 1905 coal was mined in 16 districts and the production was 14,225,000 quintals of lignite. Even though the iron mills are not equipped with modern machinery, they pay large divid ends.

For the Czechoslovak State it is important that Slovakia has salt, which is completely lacking in the Czech lands. It has been under the old regime, a state monopoly and its production was 59,000 quintals, valued at 1,150,000 crowns.

The composition of the soil is very suitable for the manufacture of pottery; it has given rise in remote times to this industry, the products, of which are well-known to collectors of pottery. In 1900 there were 1326 persons in Slovakia working in 11 potteries. But since this branch of the industry is entirely Slovak, the Hungarian government favored the importation of