Page:The Czechoslovaks in the United States.djvu/5

 there are four Czech daily papers, in New York one Czech and two Slovak, in Cleveland two Czech and one Slovak. Weekly and monthly publications exceed one hundred.



Children of Czechoslovak immigrants become keen Americans in the public school. They speak English even to their parents, they look upon the United States as their country and the best country in the world and they take little interest in the country, language and customs of their parents. The older people seldom learn to know the true America; they come in contact mostly with the seamy side of American life. Some few grow bitter and return, or adopt radical opinions. But most of the Czechoslovak immigrants gradually adjust themselves to their American surroundings. Their ambition reaches toward a comfortable home, movies, radios, victrolas and perhaps an automobile. In short, they seek material prosperity. The America of the Christian churches, typified by idealism and altruism, remains a stranger to them.



In the old country over 95 per cent, of the Czech immigrants were Roman Catholic, at least nominally. Of the Slovaks about one sixth belonged to the Lutheran church, with a smaller number of Calvanists. In the United States over a half of the Czechs abandoned the Catholic church. A similar movement is going on today in Czechoslovakia, since its liberation from Austrian rule; but whereas in Czechoslovakia the former Catholics joined for the most part the Protestant church or the New National church, the earlier movement away from Rome in America was rationalistic and openly anti-religious. Its force has by this