Printed in the United States of America
[Transcriber's Note: Following are transcriptions of the last two illustrations.]
ORGAN OF THE BOHEMIAN-AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES.Vol. 1.OMAHA, NEB., SEPTEMBER 1, 1892.No. 1.NOTES.
ORGAN OF THE BOHEMIAN-AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Vol. 1.OMAHA, NEB., SEPTEMBER 1, 1892.No. 1.
NOTES.
Once Protestant, Bohemia at present is overwhelmingly Catholic. In 1890 the Catholics numbered 96.17 per cent, the Protestants 2.22 per cent and the Jews 1.56 per cent. It must be borne in mind, however, that prior to 1781, in which year the “Patent of Toleration” was issued, no other church was tolerated outside the Catholic.
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Bohemia may be said to be a country of farmers, judging from the number of persons engaged in agricultural pursuits. Out of every one thousand people 408.7 per cent are engaged in the cultivation of soil and forestry; 352.6 per cent find employment in manufacturing and mining, 59.5 per cent in commerce, railroading, etc., and 87.8 per cent earn their living as laborers.
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Illiteracy in Bohemia is rapidly disappearing. According to the general census of 1890 the ratio of adults unable to read and write is 19.69 per cent, which compares favorably with that of the most advanced of European nations. Figures compiled in 1881 show the ratio of illiteracy to be in England, 16 per cent; Scotland, 12; Ireland, 33; France, 22; Germany, 6; Russia, 89; Austria 51 (education is especially backward in Hungary and Transylvania); Italy, 59; Spain and Portugal, 66; Switzerland, 12, Belgium and Holland, 14; Scandinavia, 13.
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Curiously enough, the natives do not call their country “Bohemia,” butCechy, nor themselves “Bohemians,” but “Cechs,” pron. “Chekhs” or “Czechs.” Tradition has it that the leader’s name who conducted the first Slav tribe to Bohemia was Cech, hence the race name. The Latin chroniclers of the Middle Ages were altogether ignorant of this, and persisted in calling the people who bore it Bohemians, and thus the Slavs of Bohemia inherited the name of the Boii (Germanic race) whom they had displaced.
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Superintendent of the Census Bureau, Mr. Porter, would hardly sanction the method adopted by the Austrian government in determining the nationality of a people. In Bohemia thelanguagespoken is the test. Americans or Irishmen would, therefore, in Austria, be classed as “English,” because they speak that language. This ingenious method is highly “useful,” especially in the present conflict of races, for it helps to bolster up the minority in the land, deceiving many as to the actual strength of the Chekhs, thousands of whom use the German language in business and social relations. Accepting the language as a test, 62.79 per cent were found in 1890 in Bohemia to “use” the Bohemian and 37.19 per cent the German tongue.
Austria is a perfect mosaic of races. This diversity is best exemplified in the complexion of the schools, where all the dominant languages of the monarchy clamor for recognition. There are universities at Vienna, Prague, Gratz, Innsbruck, Cernovice, Cracow, Lwow, Buda-Pesth, Kolosvar and Zagreb. The universities in Vienna, Gratz, Innsbruck and Cernovice teach in German; the Prague in Chekh; that of Lwow in Polish and Ruthenian; that of Cracow in Polish; those of Buda-Pesth and Kolosvar in Magyar; that of Zagreb in Croatian.
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An Englishman traveling through Bohemia thus describes the people in theIllustrated News: “As for the people there was not a sign of the dreamy sadness and strange mysticism of the Slav that one is forever reading about. They worked with a dogged energy and commonplace industry that would not have been out of the way in Zola’s peasants. In no other country is it so impossible to remain unconscious of the surplus population question and the hopelessness of the peasant’s fate. In Germany, or during our rides in France, in Italy, in England we sometimes had the road to ourselves; in Bohemia, never. There was always someone just behind us or in front of us.” This latter statement about the density of population will be understood when we remember that but 4½ per cent. of all the land in Bohemia is not under cultivation.
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Like Ireland Bohemia is governed by a lieutenant governor appointed by the sovereign. The highest legislative power in the land is the diet convoking in Prague and composed of 242 members elected by the people. One archbishop, three bishops and two university rectors, however, hold their seats by virtue of office. As may be imagined the power the diet exercises is very limited, the deliberations depending on the pleasure or displeasure of the emperor, who selects the presiding officer. The latter is styled as the “marshal,” or “high marshal.” The diet has the prerogative of electing a standing committee of eight members known as the “land committee” (zemsky vybor) and over this committee again the marshal presides. For political and administrative purposes the country is divided into circles, the circles are sub-divided into captaincies. The two crownlands, Moravia and Silesia, have each 100 and 31 deputies in their home diets, respectively. The government officials, though great reforms have taken place of late, are far from popular. This is especially the case with the military captains, for whom the people conceive as much liking as the Italians had for Radetzky and Pachta. Insufferably stiff, cold, repellent and severe, they were regarded by the people as the source of all their woes.
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE BOHEMIAN (CZECH) NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF AMERICAJaroslav F. Smetanka, Editor, 2324 S. Central Park Ave., Chicago.J. J. Fekl, Business Manager, 2816 S. St. Louis Ave., Chicago.Vol. I., No. 1.FEBRUARY, 1917.10 cents a Copy$1.00 per YearMasaryk and His Work
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE BOHEMIAN (CZECH) NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF AMERICA
Jaroslav F. Smetanka, Editor, 2324 S. Central Park Ave., Chicago.J. J. Fekl, Business Manager, 2816 S. St. Louis Ave., Chicago.
Vol. I., No. 1.FEBRUARY, 1917.10 cents a Copy$1.00 per Year
Masaryk and His Work
A patriot desires but one reward: that he should live to see his labors bear fruit. On January 12, 1917, thousands of Czechs in the United States found time in the midst of their joyous celebration of the dawn of Bohemia’s independence to remember the grand old man of Bohemia, Thomas Garigue Masaryk. He it was who put the ancient kingdom of Bohemia once more upon the map of Europe. On the day when the Allies’ answer to President Wilson was published, he surely was happy, for he had proof that his titanic labors, his tremendous personal and family sacrifices were not made in vain. Bohemia’s right to independence was clearly recognized by the Allies and the liberation of the country from foreign domination was made one of the conditions of peace.
For centuries no one in Bohemia did more than dream of independence. This Slav country had been subject to the Hapsburgs for so many generations and so thoroughly was it repressed that even the boldest spirits among its leaders regretfully put aside all thoughts of absolute freedom as visionary and aimed merely at securing for the lands of the Bohemian crown the widest possible autonomy within the confines of the Austrian Empire. On several occasions during the long reign of Francis Joseph the Czechs came near to the realization of these moderate ambitions, but always the emperor drew back unable to give up his ambition to be the German ruler of German or Germanized subjects.
Of late years the struggle of the Czechs for a certain amount of liberty at home and for the right to participate in the government of the Empire was growing more and more hopeless. The general European situation was undergoing a change greatly to the disadvantage of Bohemia. The Hapsburg realm was losing its standing as a great power, due mainly to the constant internal dissensions and language disputes, while the truly national states of Europe were growing in population, wealth and military power. Above all Germany, excelling in industrial and military preparedness, aggressive and domineering, was looking for new worlds to conquer. America was out of the question, for the United States was guarding jealously against the invasion of the two western continents through its Monroe doctrine. Germany’s African colonies were unsuitable for colonization by white men and constituted merely a financial burden. Only Asia offered an undeveloped field—the ramshackle Turkish Empire—and to that land of promise the road from Germany led through the dual empire and the Balkan states. Prague was the first stage on the Berlin-Bagdad highway, and the Czech people were the first obstacle to German expansion. It was a part of Germany’s plan to reduce Austria to complete subserviency by the exaltation of its German minority and a more thorough repression of the Slav and Latin races, with the assistance of the Magyars.
There were not lacking statemen in Bohemia who saw whither things were tending. Two of them stand out above the other Czech patriots: Dr. Charles Kramar and Professor Thomas G. Masaryk. Kramar, the leader of the Young Czech party, for years representative of the middle class of Bohemia, yielded to no one in his devotion to the race from which he sprang or in the sincerity of his intentions to serve the Czech people to the best of his great ability. But being a wealthy manufacturer, a “practical” man, intent upon gaining results in the Vienna parliament, he failed to draw the only conclusion necessitated by the changed European situation which he so well understood. He realized that Germany was “peacefully penetrating” the Danube monarchy, that the very existence of the Czech nation was imperiled; on the floor of the parliament and in the Austrian delegation
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