ns, unable to make a living at home, are fleeing
from starvation and mismanagement, and seeking work in America. Croatia
is a kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Dalmatia is the seacoast province of
Austria.

[Sidenote: Slovenians]

The Slovenians come from the provinces northwest of Croatia. The three
nationalities have probably sent between 200,000 and 300,000 persons to
America. Dalmatians are oyster fishermen at New Orleans, make staves in
Mississippi, are wine dealers in San Francisco, and vine growers and
miners in other parts of California. The Slovenians are chiefly found in
the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are
mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are
about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small
number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate
and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant
denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf.

[Sidenote: A Needy Group]

The Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins are
just beginning to come in appreciable numbers. They represent much the
same home conditions as the nationalities mentioned more in detail.
Catholicism, Greek or Roman, has cast them pretty much in the same mold.
Ignorant, semi-civilized many of them, they have everything to get and
learn in their new home, and afford still larger opportunity for
Protestant Christianity in its mighty work of making and keeping America
the land of righteousness and progress.

[Sidenote: A Hopeful View]

An interesting series of articles appeared in 1906 in a magazine devoted
to social betterment,[68] the writer having spent a year in studying
conditions in the Slav districts of Austria-Hungary. Living among the
people, she has become profoundly interested in them, and takes a most
hopeful view of their possibilities in America. She says the life from
which the peasants mostly come to us is the old peasant life, but a
little way removed from feudalism and serfdom. Each little village is a
tiny world in itself, with its own traditions and ways, its own dress,
perhaps even its own dialect. The amazing gift of the Slav for color and
music permeates the whole home life with poetry. The Slav immigrants
have the virtues and faults of their primitive world. They come to
America to make money. The majority come with intent to earn money to
take back home, rather than