e not holding a
government license for the purpose, by contracting with a steamship line
from their own Adriatic part of Fiume in order to reduce migration
across the German and Italian frontiers. This may account for the
decline of ten thousand immigrants from Austria-Hungary in 1906.

Practically the entire migration of the Slavic elements at the present
time is that of peasants. In Croatia the forests have been depleted, and
thousands of immigrant wood-choppers have sought the forests of our
South and the railway construction of the West. The natural resources of
Croatia are by no means inadequate, but the discriminating taxes and
railway freight rates imposed by Hungary have prevented the development
of these resources. The needed railways are not obtainable for the
development of the mines and minerals of Croatia, and the peasants,
unable to find employment at home, are allured by the advertisements of
American steamships and the agents of American contractors.

So it is with the Slovak peasants and mine workers of the northern
mountains and foothills. With agricultural wages only eighteen cents a
day, they find employment in the American mines, rolling-mills,
stock-yards, and railroad construction at $1.50 a day.

In addition to race discrimination, the blight of Austria-Hungary is
landlordism. Considerable reforms, indeed, have been made in certain
sections. The free alienation of landed property was adopted in the
Austrian dominions in 1869, and in the following twelve years 42,000 new
holdings were carved out of the existing peasant proprietorships in
Bohemia. Similar transfers have occurred elsewhere, but even where this
peasant ownership has gained, the enormous prices are an obstacle to
economic independence. They compel the land-owning peasant to content
himself with five to twelve acres, the size of four-fifths of the farms
in Galicia. His eagerness to own land is his dread of the mere
wage-earner's lot, which he no longer dreads when he lands in America.
"The fear of falling from the social position of a peasant to that,
immeasurably inferior, of a day laborer, is the great spur which drives
over the seas alike the Slovak, the Pole, and the Ruthenian."[49] These
high rentals and fabulous values can exist only where wages and
standards of living are at the bare subsistence level, leaving a heavy
surplus for capitalization. They also exist as a result of most
economical and minute cultivation, so that, wi