The natural question rising in one's mind is, Why did these great hordes come to America and to Pittsburgh? Let me answer in terms of men. The main cause is of course economic. On the one side there is the old world surplus of labor accompanied by low wages, the barrenness of the land which every year becomes more insufficient to support growing populations, and economic disasters affecting sometimes individuals and sometimes whole communities; on the other side, the stories of the wealth of some bolder pioneers and of the great opportunities in this country, confirmed and exaggerated by the crafty agents of transportation companies. An illustration of this economic impetus is the simple story of Grigory Leshkoff. Grigory comes from a Russian peasant family in which there were seven sons and twenty poor acres of land. "What were we to do at home?" Grigory demanded of me with a shrug. "Just look at one another,—hey?" One by one these sons left the crowded farm and sought work in the few mines and factories located near them. Grigory's younger brother was the first from the village to seek America, coming here in 1902. But soon others followed him, "and now," said Grigory, "there are in Homestead at least fifty young men from our village."

Grigory, by the way, is a veteran of the Japanese war, having come to America immediately after its close. But he has little to say about this one of the great conflicts of modern times; in fact, he looks upon his experience upon battle fields as quite commonplace compared with his experience in the steel mills. From the first he emerged without a scratch; in the second he lost a leg. When I saw him he was deeply concerned with what a strong man of twenty-seven with only one leg was going to do with his future,—and the simple peasant was not seeing much hope ahead.

Grigory came from Chernigov. From this government, and from Minsk and Grodno, where the soil is exhausted and where the shares of the villagers in the communes grow less with each redistribution of the land, the Russians are setting out in increasing numbers. Not altogether dissimilar causes operate in certain districts of Austria-Hungary. Pribich used to be one of the richest wine growing regions in Croatia, but some fifteen years ago the vines were devastated by a blight, necessitating replanting with American stock. In this way hundreds of once prosperous farmers were reduced to poverty. Many of them came to the United States in the hope of earning enough money to pay for the necessary replanting of their vineyards. Lazo Milutich, who gave me this information, was himself one of those affected by the calamity. He came to Allegheny about twelve years ago, where he tried different jobs, and after two years wandering landed at Wilmerding. Here he has worked for the last ten years in the same foundry.

Other causes than economic pressure have of course played their part in this great migration. Political oppression is one. I have met a number of political refugees among the older Slavs, many now persons of importance. And another is the blandishment and trickery of the steamship agent. John Godus, a Slovak living in Braddock, is one of a group of twelve young men brought here in 1901, by the last influence. To their village came a man dressed as a common workingman. We can imagine him in high boots, wearing an embroidered shirt, and smoking a long-stemmed pipe. He was a steamship agent, thus disguised to escape the attention of the gendarmerie. He quietly found out what young men were at the age when one has to present himself for conscription in the army,—for such youths he had discovered, were the easiest induced to be customers; secretly argued with them that it would be foolishness to give three of their best years to the army, where they would be slapped, kicked and cursed; and in the end sold them all tickets.

It is perhaps but natural that Pittsburghers should believe that the fame of their industries should draw these Slavs straight from their villages to Pittsburgh. Yet this is rarely true,—true only in exceptional cases, such as that of Joseph Sabata, a Bohemian. He was an iron-worker at home and was employed in a large rolling mill in Moravia. Their machinery was imported mostly from the United States and he, noticing the name of an Allegheny firm on some of the pieces, thought that in that city he could learn more about his business; and so five years ago decided to come over. After being landed at Ellis Island, he discovered while in line waiting to be questioned, that everybody was asked to show an address. Such an address he did not have, but he does have quick wits; he hastily scribbled on a piece of paper "Allegheny," and the name of a cousin still in the old country who had probably never even heard the name of that city. He was readily admitted, went straight to Allegheny, and when I saw him was earning $2.75 a day in a machine shop.

In another case I met with, the coming straight to Pittsburgh was quite accidental. VÁclav MÁlek, a Bohemian, who came here with his parents eighteen years ago when a lad of sixteen, had intended to settle with the rest of the family on a farm in Wisconsin. But on the way across the ocean they became acquainted with another Bohemian family, bound for Pittsburgh, who had been robbed of their money, and to these people MÁlek's father loaned eighty dollars. In order not to lose the money they decided to keep near their debtors and they too came to Pittsburgh. John even to this day is sorry they didn't go on a farm,—and for a double reason: first, he has a natural preference for farm labor which is never to be gratified; second, in the course of his work for an Allegheny company, an accident crippled him for life.

In the vast majority of cases the Slavs in Pittsburgh had not the slightest intention of settling there when they first came to America. Usually their location there has been preceded by a period of a year or two or even longer during which they have wandered hither and thither, from one factory to another, from town to town, looking for the right place to settle.

Large numbers of the Slovaks come to Pittsburgh by way of the anthracite fields. At the time of the strike,—and for several years before when conditions were bad in hard coal mining, half-time, and the like of that, the Slavic mineworkers drifted west,—across the state to the steel mill district.

The experience of a Ruthenian named Koval is typical of a great number of men. He came to America three years ago, and was sent by an immigrant home in New York to work in the forests of West Virginia as a woodcutter. The wages there were only fifty cents a day, and in other ways the conditions were so bad that he and three other men ran away. They wandered through the woods until they came to a little settlement with a saw mill, where they were offered work and stayed for about two months, earning $1.50 a day. Then a surveyor came to the village, who spoke Polish, and told them that in Allegheny they could earn a good deal more money than in the woods, so to Allegheny they decided to go. There they obtained work as laborers in the locomotive works at $1.50 for a day of ten hours.

Such a wanderer also, was Smulkstis, a Lithuanian who started life as a messenger boy in the telegraph service in St. Petersburg. He came to a friend in Wilmerding four years ago, but, unable to get the kind of work he wanted, he sought out another friend in Worcester, Mass., where he got a job in a woolen mill. The next spring found him back in Pittsburgh as a machine operator in an electrical plant. To-day,—he is still only twenty-two,—he is a crane man in the Homestead steel mills. Similarly, a Croatian who was spending the winter in Duquesne, was a type of the migratory railroad laborer, who drifts from one contractor's gang to another. He had been all over Indiana, Ohio and the Middle West and had taken his wife and children with him. They made shift in cars and shanties and construction camps of all sorts.

One fact that was continually striking me in Pittsburgh was the number of ordinary men, earning low wages, who seem to be fitting themselves permanently to their new environment. John Gerza, an engine cleaner in the Fort Wayne yards, and his family impressed me as having, in their five years in this country, adapted themselves very readily to the atmosphere and to the life of Pittsburgh. There are no regrets nor looking backward, nothing to draw him away from the present life. The explanation for this adaptation is the explanation in so many other cases that it is worth setting down. Gerza lived in a Moravian village where till sixteen years ago there had been no impulse to move away from the soil. The villagers were rooted to their ancient homes; they thought only of the land, and they tilled it in the same old, primitive manner of their forefathers. Then a railroad was built through the country, and factories sprang up. These drew agricultural laborers from the villages, and thereby unsettled the population; unsettled the old conditions of life, and practically destroyed that love for, that almost physical kinship with, the soil and the old home which I found so strong among the Slavs in general. Gerza's wife used to work in a sugar factory at home; he himself used to be a brakeman on a freight train. With them it was not the severe and wrenching change from farm to factory, with the involved breaking away from loved surroundings; it was the comparatively simple change from one industrial pursuit to a comparatively similar industrial pursuit.

Palinski, a Russian Pole of forty-five who has been in America eighteen years, is another example of that really considerable class of ordinary, low-paid workmen who have made a small success,—if owning a home and having a happy family and being content is termed success. The highest pay Palinski has ever received was $1.65 a day, and yet, though he has five children, he managed five years ago to buy in conjunction with his brother the house in which they live. They paid $1,600 for the property, and now Jones and Laughlin want to buy it and Palinski expects to sell for at least $3,000. The oldest child, a girl of fifteen, is kept in public school, and the three other children of school age are sent to the parochial school where tuition must be paid. The house is strikingly clean and well arranged. Palinski seems to be well satisfied with himself, his family and his work.

It was a marvel to me how a man with Palinski's wages could own such a pleasant home, raise so large a family of children, educate them, and keep them well-dressed and healthy. The explanation lies in a great measure outside Palinski. He is a good man, but, as in so many of the cases where the Slavs have wrought pleasant homes out of little wages, the credit is largely due to the wife. Mrs. Palinski must have been a wonderful manager; even to the casual eye, she was neat, bright and energetic. In estimating the worth to America of this pair, one must not consider alone the hardworking husband and the able wife; one must consider their contribution of healthy, educated children.

These men are fixtures; in a generation or two their children and children's children are likely to be an indistinguishable part of that conglomerate product, the American citizen. In contrast to these men are the great numbers who are not content, who are not fixtures,—whose great dream it is some day to get back to their native village, live out their years there and, what is no small consideration with many, be laid at rest in friendly soil. Why these men, even though successful here, have this yearning and take this action, presents a rather tough question to most persons. That question, I think, I can best answer by reciting the case of Mike Hudak.

Hudak is a Slovak who came to this country seventeen years ago when a youth of nineteen. He is a fine type of a man in every way; physically he could almost be classed as a giant, for he stands six feet two, is deep of chest and broad of shoulders. He works in the Pennsylvania repair shops at Oliver, earning eighty dollars a month, which is good pay for a Slav when one considers that the work is regular and not dangerous. He seems to be quite a figure in his neighborhood, for when I walked home with him one day he was addressed from all sides in tones that showed liking and respect. He dresses neatly and has a fluent command of English. If there is any type of immigrant that we need above all others it struck me that Mike Hudak is that type.

I first discovered his yearning by asking him why he was not a citizen. "Why should I forswear myself," said he.

I did not understand and asked for an explanation. "As I am going back to my old country, it would not be right to give up my allegiance there and make myself a citizen here." I pressed him for his reasons for going back, and he gave them to me,—reasons that fit thousands and thousands of cases. With him that preliminary process of being separated from the soil had not taken place, as with John Gerza. He was a farmer by age-old instinct; his love for the land was a part of his being, was a yearning which would leave him only with death. Now, since over here he had been plunged straight into industry, the only land he had ever known in a way to become attached to it was the land in which he was born, and when the time came when he was able to gratify his longing for land his thoughts went only to the land in his old country. So, though socially as well off as he would be there, and economically much better off, he was going back. Undoubtedly he, too, would be a fixture in America could he have gone on a farm immediately upon his arrival here,—for then his instinctive land-love would have been weaned from the old country and fixed upon America. Few Slavs who settle upon the land ever change back to Europe.

The Slavs are strong, willing workers, and are generally considered by the steel mill officials the best laborers they get,—but now and then there is a man who is too slow for America. One of these was John Kroupa, a Bohemian who has been here twenty-two years. Faithful, strong, willing, it wasn't in him to keep up the race. He was in his earlier years here employed in a steel mill, but he was dropped. As he frankly said to me, "You have to be pretty quick in those mills, and it isn't a job for a man like me." Later he got a job as watchman on a Pennsylvania Railroad crossing in Woods Run, and there he worked for sixteen years, his wages forty dollars a month for a twelve hour day and a seven day week. (In the last two years, forty-four dollars.) All this while he hoped for promotion, but it did not come and this non-recognition rankled within him. "Other men, who were all sore from sitting down so much, were promoted," exclaimed he, "but I, who was always hustling, was never thought of, and I can tell you it wasn't an easy job to watch that no accident happened, as more than 300 trains passed that way every day and very often at full speed, disregarding the city ordinances,—thirty or forty miles an hour." Three years ago the crossing was abolished, the tracks having been elevated. The superintendent came to him at that time. "Well, John, I am sorry for you; going to lose your happy home. But you'll get another just as good." This was too much for John; his long smoldering disappointment burst out. "Go to hell!" said he, "A happy home! I could just as well have been in the penitentiary over there; I would have been much better off, without the responsibility and worry I have here. During sixteen years I didn't have a single day off. Sundays and weekdays both I have to be here for twelve hours. Do you call that a happy home?"

He refused the new-old job. He now keeps a little store in Woods Run, which he has established out of his savings and with the help of his children,—a store which might have served Dickens for one of his grotesque backgrounds, for here are on sale hardware, candy, crackers, bacon, eggs, molasses. Kroupa cannot be classed as a failure, for he has managed to buy a home and raise and educate a good sized family, but he has not made the success that his qualities of constancy, honesty and sobriety should have won him. His inborn slowness was too great a handicap.

Among the Slavs the Slovaks strike me as the most ambitious and pushing. This is all the more surprising when one remembers that the conditions out of which they come are as bad as the conditions surrounding any of the Slavs, and worse than most. The Slovaks when they come here, are poor, illiterate, have no training, are inured to oppression; yet they have pluck, perseverance, enterprise and courage. From their ranks are recruited many of the foremen in the mills and an ever increasing number of merchants. In the Woods Run district, with which I happen to be best acquainted,—a low-lying mill neighborhood along the Ohio in Allegheny City, probably one-half of the stores and saloons are in the hands of Slovaks, or their close neighbors, the Hungarian Rusnaks. They were all common laborers at one time. Most of the stores are well kept and, in general, prosperous-looking, and among their customers are not only Slavs, but Americans as well.

A type of this class of men, the men who succeed, is John Mlinek. When I first saw him I had not the least thought that he was a Slav, so well-dressed and thoroughly Americanized did he seem, and such good English did he speak. He came to America thirteen years ago when only fifteen years old. He worked successively as a breaker-boy and driver in the mines at Mahanoy City, then in the iron-works at Elizabeth, New Jersey, then as a riveter in the Pressed Steel Car Company at Allegheny, where he was soon making three to four dollars a day. As he neither drank nor indulged in any other form of dissipation he saved considerable money. In 1905, he married a Slovak girl born and brought up in this country who for several years before her marriage, had clerked in a store where they had foreign customers. She is a little more refined than the average English-speaking girl of the working class, and holds a high position in her own circle. She is quite ambitious and induced her husband to start a store in Woods Run. He sells cigars and candy and is doing very well; from what I could gather, they already must have several thousand dollars saved. These young people seem to be much liked in the community; they are prominent both in their social circle and in their church, and Mlinek is an influential man among the Slovak societies, though he does not at all push himself to the front. Mlinek, I would say, is at the beginning of a considerable success; his prospects and his personality favor his achieving it; only some untoward set of circumstances can keep him down.

A few paragraphs back, in the case of Hudak, I spoke of the powerful call their native bit of earth makes upon so many of the immigrants. But frequently when men go back, intending to stay, in response to this call, the old country is not strong enough to hold them. Such was the case with this same John Mlinek. It was his ambition to be a well-to-do farmer in Hungary in a few years, and recently he and his wife made a preliminary visit to his old home and bought a farm. They remained a few weeks,—but those few weeks were quite enough. He came back quite cured. "Every little clerk in the village looked down on me, because I didn't speak the official language, Magyar," Mlinek said to me. "He was an official while I was just a peasant. He didn't earn a quarter of what I do, yet I had to bow to him. That made me sore. In America I'm a free man. Besides, I've got a better chance to do well than in the old country. Yes, America is good enough for me."

Mike Mamaj is another successful man; he also returned to Hungary, expecting to live there, and he also turned his back on his native country and came again to America, this time to stay. He has learned to speak, read and write English, and he is full of energy, though rather rude and domineering in his manner. During the early part of his career in America (he came here twenty years ago) he had a hard time, but for the last seven years he has been a foreman in the car shops at Woods Run. He has seventy men working under him, and part of the time he has earned $100 a month. He owns the house in which he lives, worth about $2,500, has property in the old country to the value of $1,500, and has money in the bank.

Mamaj is proud of his success, of his home, of his children. So proud that, on the occasion of our first meeting, though the bed-time hour of nine had come, he dragged me off to show me the evidence of what he had done in America.

Drawn by Joseph Stella.

PITTSBURGH TYPES.

IMMIGRANT OUT OF WORK.