Page:The Czechoslovaks in the United States.djvu/4

 Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas. From the province of Moravia a stream of land-hungry families was directed toward Texas, the only southern state where Czechoslovaks have settled in considerable numbers.

Some Czech immigrants from the very beginning preferred the cities. Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Cleveland have had large Bohemian “colonies” for more than fifty years. As good homesteads grew scarce, immigrants congregated more and more in the cities. Today Chicago and its suburbs have over 150,000 Czechs of the first and second generation, not counting thousands of the third generation which is pretty well merged in the mass of Americans.

Almost all Slovak immigrants became industrial workers. Thousands are employed in the various industries of New York and vicinity, in the stockyards of Chicago and the steelmills of Gary, and in the factories of Cleveland and Detroit. But the greatest numbers are in the anthracite coal region around Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in the coke and steel district of Pittsburgh.



It was natural for Czechoslovak immigrants coming to a new country with a strange language and unfamiliar customs to seek the companionship of their own people and to live in colonies affording the social life familiar to them. They built churches and halls, founded fraternal societies, social and athletic associations, and published newspapers in their own language. There is a full score of benevolent societies with memberships ranging from two to fifty thousand. Czech Sokols (falcons), a very important organization with athletic, social and educational aims, have 12,000 members, and Slovak Sokols a like number. In Chicago