Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/275

 born in New York, knew but a few words of English, and those he pronounced like a foreigner. At home, for his sake, English conversation vas eschewed. Having been taken on a visit to his grandparents in San Jose, California, where there were no Čechs, the boy one day came running in to tell his grandfather how stupid his play mates were: they could not speak Čech! Yet all these expedients and precautions avail nothing. The moment the child crosses the threshold of the schoolhouse, the question of his future fealty is settled. With his grandmother, or other members of the family he will talk Čech, because he has found out that grandmother knows no other language. Let the child, however, sense a speaking knowledge of English in anyone, relative or neighbor, that person will ever afterward be addressed by him in English only. The oddity has been noticed among the children of foreign born parents, that while the first born speaks the mother tongue of the parents passably well, the youngest offspring speaks it poorly or not at all. The explanation is simple enough. When the first child came, the parents in all probability were still monolingual, knowing no other except their own tongue. Meantime, as the other children began arriving, the parents already had acquired a speaking knowledge of English, that is to say, they had become bilingual. In consequence, the later born children, no longer needing the “other language” in their intercourse with parents or older kin, never learned it.

From the chapter, Nineteenth Century Immigration and after.

Until 1884 the Austrian authorities kept a record of emigration in the Emigration Tabellen. These tables registered annually persons who left the empire and “emigrated to foreign lands with the intention of not returning”. They noted the age, sex and property interests of the emigrant. After 1867 the authorities began to lose control of the movement and in 1884 the central bureau of statistics in Vienna abandoned this tabulation as unsatisfactory. Instead it commenced to publish in the Statistische Monatschrift data bearing on the transoceanic emigration only, based on figures collected by Austrian consuls at the principal seaports of the world.

In the sixties of the last century the Frenchman Alfred Legoyt could say truthfully that the people of Austria did not show any proneness to emigrate. With apparent satisfaction he noted that there were several factors which mitigated against emigration on a larger scale. Among other considerations there were the great distances to seaports, strict, almost prohibitive regulations by the state, prosperity among the small farmers, large areas of undeveloped land awaiting skilled cultivators and so forth. Yet, before long economists were amazed to witness an almost revolutionary change in this respect.

From Bohemia we recognize two distinct kinds of emigration; the political one which had its origin in the revolutionary disturbances of 1848,, [sic]and the other emigration, due to economic causes.

The wonderful stories of the discovery of gold in California excited the Čechs no less than they agitated other Europeans. Newspapers wrote about the rich California gold fields in highly colored articles, while emigration agents, plying their trade surreptitiously, magnified what was already exaggerated by the press. Warning by the authorities against emigration had litle or no effect; in a like manner admonitions by the church proved futile. It is probably true that the gold craze affected Bohemia more generally than it agitated other Austrian states. In 1853, 1,311 people emigrated from Plzeň district, 1,009 from Budějovice district. The year following witnessed the departure from the first-named district of 1,946, from the second 1,386 and from Pardubice district 1,068. In 1855 Tábor district lost by emigration 649, Chrudim 499, Eger (Cheb) and Plzeň 426 each. A falling off occurred in 1859, when no more than 812 left Bohemia. Non-official statisticians estimate, however, that the figures here given are by far too low and that we should strike the mark by doubling them. All told, the number of emigrants from the empire to America during the California gold fever amounted to about 25,000.

From the outset Bohemia and Moravia send out an almost even ratio of males and females. Tabulated according to age, a majority of the emigrants are found to be between 17 and 40, which years, experience has demostrated, represent a period of the highest physical productivity; in the adult male wage earner it is a time when ambition impels one to most intensive ef fort and action.