South Slavs

“ We must make Americans of our immigrants in the South and not allow them to be the assimilating forces. We must meet them with an unprejudiced mind, an honest purpose, and a welcoming hand in order to lead them into the close union of our national life. This is a duty which the future places upon us and from which the patriotic manhood of the South can not shrink.
As the Slavs have already demonstrated their ability on southern farms, and have won recognition as desirable agricultural settlers, why then should we not encourage as well as welcome their coming! ”

“ To-day their colony enjoys the full confidence of the people of southeast Virginia, and in the city of Petersburg and their respective counties they are very highly regarded.
Slavs they are, every one of them: Slavs, however, who are proud of their origin, and who are zealous in their efforts to command the respect of their fellow citizens. Slavs who are loyal, patriotic Americans. They are respectful of the traditions of the Old South, and are eager, active builders of the New South. ”

“ The large majority were Slavs—either Poles, Croats or Bosniaks, and these got on much better with the populace than the Magyars or Germans, of whom I met a few. The mistake of the Government was in trying to go too fast. A leap in twenty-eight years from the twelfth century or thereabouts to the twentieth was too much. The peasant intensely conservative by nature resented every change. "Better that a village should fall than a custom" is a South Slav proverb which I have heard quoted with approval. ”

“ It becomes harder to carelessly class them as “undesirable immigrants,” for even the most prejudiced of us in the South are forced to recognize in them some merit, as they have proved that they can do on southern farms what we ourselves are apparently unable to do.
A deeper feeling of sympathy also awakens in us as we realize in our more sober moments that with the coming of the Slavs to the South we are recruiting in part the army upon which we must depend to build the greater nation through the building of a greater South. ”

“ In the whole colony, which is represented to a certain extent in all of the so-called nine south-side counties, including Amelia, Brunswick, Chesterfield, Dinwiddie, Greensville, Nottoway, Prince George, Surry, and Sussex, there are possibly as many as 3,000 Slavs. Slovaks predominate, and, it is interesting to note, they hold a place equally as high as the Bohemians. There are a few Russian Poles here and there, particularly in Surry and Sussex Counties, and a few scattering families of Lithuanians and Slovenians. All of these people are engaged in agriculture. ”

“ At various periods, Europe has been invaded and peopled by different races from the east, and the last of these migrants, the Slavs, for the most part took the direction of the great water-ways of Russia, that is, from the south-east towards the north-west. In addition to their nomadic habit, various causes, amongst which must be counted internecine warfare, led to the dispersion of the Slavs, whilst effective occupation by earlier migrants and the determined resistance of aboriginal races checked their progress in some directions. ”

“ The truthfulness of this is evidenced by the Bohemian, Serb, Polish, and Slovak colonists found in Texas, by the Slovaks in Arkansas, by the Bohemian and Slovak farmers in the south-side Virginia counties, and by the Slavish farmers in Oklahoma, Missouri, Maryland, Alabama, Louisiana, and in the other Southern States.
Slavs are now engaged in agriculture in each of the 16 Southern States. Only a very few are found in some, it is true, but wherever they are found they enjoy the confidence and the good will of their neighbors. ”

“ These Slavs occupy the main mass of the Balkan Peninsula downwards from the Julian Alps and the line of the Muhr, Drave and Danube. North of this all three races have considerable settlements in southern Hungary. Their southern boundary is very ill-defined, various nationalities being closely intermingled. To the south-west the Slavs march with the Albanians, to the south-east with the Turks, and to the south and along the Aegean coasts they have the Greeks as neighbours. ”

“ In doing this we would not be inviting economic ruin and social degradation, as certain chronic pessimists and political demagogues would have us believe, for the success of the immigrant agricultural colonies already established in the South show that under proper conditions and encouragement the recent immigrants, especially the Slavs, make very desirable citizens. ”

“ Instead of the Dutch and Flemish, English, French, German, Irish, Scandinavian, Scotch, and Welsh home seekers of yesterday, the tide of immigration now casts upon our shores Slavs, Magyars, Greeks, Russian Hebrews, north and south Italians, Syrians, Turks, and other people from southeast Europe who are emigrating to better their economic condition. ”

“ Business men of Petersburg will not resent, in the sense of becoming , the slurs cast upon our “Bohemians” by this speaker, but will regret that he failed to inform himself more accurately before expressing his opinion. Action was also immediately taken in the matter by the Chamber of Commerce of Petersburg which has resulted in a satisfactory explanation from the incautious visiting speaker. A most hearty public indorsement of the Slavs has been expressed, and all classes of citizens have united in voicing their approval of them as agricultural settlers for the south-side Virginia counties. ”

“ It is therefore possibly the Bohemians, with the possible exception of the Slovaks, more than any of the other Slavish races, about whose national, racial, and literary history so little is known and who at the same time command such an interest among the people of the South. This interest in the Bohemians on the part of the southern people is intensified by their coming among us in such large numbers as agricultural settlers. ”

“ The new citizens who come to live in the South must respond to these ideals. They must come to be southerners, and in being southerners, to be truly Americans; they must come, accepting established institutions; and must join in the national life of the South as home makers and as guardians of the integrity of the white race.
By actual demonstration the Bohemians and their Slavish brothers have proved that with proper treatment, and when accepted as men at a man’s worth, they can measure up to these requirements. ”

“ Labouring in a period when all national effort was suppressed in every possible way, when Slav sympathies were accounted high treason, he rose to a position of unassailable eminence, which enabled him to set the mark of his powerful personality like a leitmotive on the whole nineteenth-century history of the Southern Slavs. ”

“ We begin to see that we of the South owe these people a certain duty. The best interests of the Nation, as well as those of the South, demand that as they come to make their homes among us, we meet them with kindness, with fairness, and with an appreciative understanding of their needs. ”

“ The five nations which will be studied here—Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Serbians, and Czecho-Slovacs—can perfectly well represent the Slav world. For instance, the Serbians can represent the Croatians and the Slovenes not only in politics but also in literature and language. Besides, the Slavs themselves are not altogether agreed as to the number of nations into which they must be divided. The number varies, according to the writer, from seven to ten. It has even been contended that it is possible to fix the number of living Slav nations at fourteen, omitting those which have become extinct. ”

“ After a journey in 1858 through Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Montenegro, when he made abundant studies in national types and costumes, the life of the southern Slavs became his favorite field. ”

“ This method, and especially its results, appealed strongly to Charles's successor, who continued to hack the way of Christianity through Slavonic tribes until eventually the latter were completely subjugated in all the German-speaking countries of to-day. It took a long time to do this, for there is a deal of resilience in the Slav, and his soul remains his own even under much persecution. The Slavs were heavily handicapped too; they were broken up into numerous little tribes and clans, and seldom became united under the leadership of a strong man of their own race. ”

“ That which complicates the problem presented to us by the Slav is the fact that in spite of his occupying practically contiguous territory, the close family bond was early broken by conquering armies, by rival missionary groups, by invading aliens who came to pillage, barter and trade, and by the influx of his neighbours, who varied all the way from Tartar and Turk to German and Magyar; from Finn and Armenian to Greek and Albanian.
When we speak of Slavs to-day we refer to Aryan people, whatever that may mean beyond the fact that they are Europeans, presenting no great ethnic variations ”

“ Let us assure ourselves, then, that there will be no “immigration problem” in the South, for it is within our power to avoid these so-called dangers if we will only face the situation squarely and properly. ”

“ The nucleus, the life-giving element of the Southern Slav family and its culture, is formed by the Southern Slavs of Serbia, Old Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia and Serbian Hungary, or, to give them their collective name, by the Serbo-Croats. ”

“ The effect of the poor whites and negroes moving from the farms has been partly counteracted by the influx of farmers from the Northern and Western States, and by small groups of immigrants who are leaving the industrial centers of the North and Middle West to go on the land. Neither of these movements, however, is sufficient to meet the demand for industrial labor in the South, nor to people our millions of vacant acres. The future economic development of the South is therefore dependent on immigration. ”

“ In the present crisis the Slav race is by no means seeking a return to the past. The past has seen the Slavs masters of a great empire and a real menace to the rest of the world. If one were to take the political map of Europe and indicate upon it the frontiers of the ancient Slav Empire, the Slav race would appear like an irresistible deluge. The huge Muscovite Empire, almost the whole of Austria-Hungary, the whole15 of the Balkans, two-thirds of the German Empire, part of Italy, and a large part of Scandinavia—all these once formed the Slav Empire. ”

“ Already, close to the railway tracks and in the more unfashionable northern section of the little city, a huddling cluster of little black shacks gave such a colony shelter. With a sprinkling of Germans, Italians and Swiss, it was almost solidly Slav. Slavs of all varieties from all provinces and speaking all dialects were there to be found: Slavs from Little Russia and from Great Russia, the alert Polak, the heavy Croatian, the haughty Magyar, and occasionally the stalwart Dalmatian from the Adriatic, in speech mostly Ruthenian, in religion orthodox Greek Catholic or Uniat and Roman Catholic. ”

“ These movements ceased in the seventh century, the close of which saw the Slavs firmly established in European Russia, Illyria, and Bulgaria. They were employed in agriculture and stock-raising, and their characteristics appear to have been much the same as those observed at the present day in the rural populations of Eastern Europe. Ancient writers agree in depicting them as being hospitable and cheerful, firmly attached to ancient customs, courageous, and fighting only in self-defence. ”

“ The Southern Slavs, moreover, need to stand together. They occupy an extremely important and a dangerous position; they are the guardians of the gate that leads from Central Europe to Constantinople and Bagdad. For three small peoples, placed in such a position, the motto that “in union there is strength” cannot be too much emphasized.
It is, of course, true that the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes have been politically separated throughout their history, as a result of geography and such accidents as the Turkish, Magyar, and German conquests. ”

“ Perhaps, from being more oppressed and beset by foes than any of the other Slavs, these nations have come to look upon their sense of race as a sheet-anchor to which they clung, at first with hope, and then with heart-felt love. To a Russian,104 Slavdom is the symbol of his protectorate, but to a Serbo-Croat it is the breath of life. ”

“ German “kultur” and Magyar lack of culture were held in equal abomination by the Slav nations upon whom they were to be inflicted, and the ruthless spoliation to which they were likewise subjected engendered a deep-seated animosity. The Northern Slavs, who possess more practical business capacity than the Southern, did not allow themselves to be economically strangled, and even contrived to hold their own in this respect; whereas the Southern Slavs, being mainly an agricultural people, found themselves the helpless victims of Austrian and Hungarian rapacity. ”

“ This poetry has been for centuries a life-force of the Southern Slav nation, because morality and life are one, and because the spirit of Serbian beauty—barbaric and god-like—is a religion in192 poetry and a moral in art. Without fear we may say that Serbian ethics are the most wonderful in the history of humanity. If it may be said of any nation that it is great and noble, it may be said of the Southern Slavs. Europe does not realize the monstrous injustice she has done these “barbarous” peoples. They are rather a heroic and mythical than a barbaric people. ”