FIUME, BUDAPEST, AND THE IMMIGRANT
It was a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy day when the little coasting
vessel that was to take us across the Adriatic drew out from the gray
and misty harbour of the ancient city of Ancona and started in the
direction of Fiume, the single point at which the Kingdom of Hungary
touches the sea. I had read of the hardships of the early immigrants,
and I heard once an old coloured man, who had been carried to America
as a slave, tell of the long journey of himself and some fifty others,
all crowded together in a little sailing vessel. It was not, however,
until this trip of a few hours on the Adriatic in a dirty, ill-smelling
little vessel that I began to understand, although I had crossed the
ocean several times, how uncomfortable a sea voyage might be.
Fortunately the journey was not a long one, and after the vessel found
itself in the shelter of one of the beautiful green islands which are
stationed like sentinels along the Dalmatian coast, it was possible to
go on deck and enjoy the view of the rugged and broken coast line. It
was indeed a splendid sight, in the clear light of the late afternoon,
to watch the great blue-gray clouds roll up over the green and
glistening masses of the islands, which lifted themselves on every side
out of the surrounding sea.
What I had heard and read of the Dalmatian coast had led me to look
for the signs of an ancient civilization, not unlike that which I had
left in Italy. What impressed me at first sight about Fiume, however,
was the brand-new and modern character of everything in view. I do not
mean that the city had any of the loose-jointed and straggling newness
of some of our western American towns. It had rather the newness and
completeness of one of those modern German cities, which seem to have
been planned and erected out of hand, at the command of some higher
authority. In that part of Germany which I visited I noticed that
nothing was allowed to grow up naturally, in the comfortable and
haphazard disorder that one finds in some parts of America. This is
particularly true of the cities. Everything is tagged and labelled, and
ordered with military precision. Even the rose-bushes in the gardens
seem to show the effect of military discipline. Trimmed and pruned,
they stand up straight, in long and regular rows, as if they were
continually presenting arms.
The impression which I got of modern Hungary at Fiume was confirmed
by what I saw a few days later at Budapest, the capital. There was
the same air of newness and novelty, as if the city had been erected
overnight, and the people had not yet grown used to it.
A little further acquaintance with the cities of Fiume and Budapest
made it plain, however, in each case, that the new city which filled
the eye of the stranger had been, as a matter of fact, built over, or,
rather, added to, a more ancient one.
In Fiume, for example, somewhat hidden away behind the new buildings
which line the broad avenue of the modern Magyar city, there is still
preserved the outlines of the ancient Italian town, with its narrow,
winding streets, crowded with all the quaint and vivid life, the petty
traffic, and the varied human sights and sounds with which I had become
familiar during my journey through Italy.
So in Budapest, across the river from the modern Hungarian, or, rather,
Magyar city of Pest, there is the ancient German city of Buda, with its
castle and palace, which dates back into the Middle Ages.
What is still more interesting is that in these two modern cities of
Fiume and Pest, in which one sees and feels the impress of a strong
and masterful people, one meets everywhere, in the midst of this
feverish and artificial modern life, evidences of the habit and manners
which belong to an older and simpler age.
For example, it struck me as curious that in a city which is so well
provided with the latest type of electric street cars one should
see peasant women trudging in from the country with heavy loads of
vegetables on their backs; and, in a city where the Government is
seeking to provide modern houses for the labouring classes, with all
the conveniences that invention can supply, one should see these same
peasant women peacefully sleeping on the pavement or under the wagons
in the public square, just as they have been so long accustomed to
sleep, during the harvest times, in the open fields.
In the same way, in another connection, it seemed strange to read
in the report of the Minister of Agriculture that an agricultural
school at Debreczen, which had been carried on in connection with an
agricultural college at the same place, had been closed because "the
pupils of this school, being in daily contact with the first-year
pupils of the college, boarding at the Pallag, attempted to imitate
their ways, wanted more than was necessary _for their future social
position_, and at the same time they aimed at a position they were not
able to maintain."
All this suggests and illustrates the rapidity with which changes
are going on in Hungary and the haste with which the leaders in the
Government and in social life are moving to catch up with and, if
possible, get ahead of the procession of progress in the rest of Europe.
The trouble seems to be that in Hungary progress has begun at the top,
with the Government, instead of at the bottom, with the people. The
Government, apparently, desires and hopes to give the masses of the
people an education that will increase their usefulness, without at the
same time increasing their wants and stimulating their desire to rise.
Its efforts to improve the condition of the masses are further confused
by a determination to suppress the other nationalities and preserve the
domination of the Magyar race. In short, I think I might sum up the
situation by saying that Hungary is trying the doubtful experiment of
attempting to increase the efficiency of the people without giving them
freedom.
The result is that while the Government is closing up the schools
because, as the Minister of Agriculture says, "an important political
and social principle is endangered" when students begin to hope and
dream of a higher and better situation in life than that in which they
were born, the masses of the people are emigrating to America in order
to better their condition.
At Fiume I had an opportunity to study at close range what I may call
the process of this emigration. I had, in other words, an opportunity
to see something, not merely of the manner in which the stream of
emigration, flowing out from the little inland villages, is collected
and cared for at Fiume until it pours into and is carried away in the
ships, but also to get a more definite idea of the motives and social
forces that are working together to bring about this vast migration of
the rural populations of southeastern Europe.
In no country in Europe, not even in Italy, has emigration been so
carefully studied, and in no country has more been done to direct and
control emigration than in Hungary. At the same time I think it is safe
to say that nowhere else has emigration brought so many changes in the
political and social life of the people. At one time, indeed, it seemed
as if Hungary proposed to make emigration a state monopoly. This was
when the Government, in granting to the Cunard Steamship Company a
monopoly of the emigrant business at Fiume, made a contract to furnish
that line at least 30,000 emigrants a year. At that time there were
between one hundred and two hundred thousand emigrants leaving Hungary
every year, most of whom were making the journey to America by way of
the German lines at Hamburg and Bremen.
It is said that the Hungarian Government, in order to turn the tide
of emigration in the direction of Fiume and swell the traffic at that
port, directed that all steamship tickets should be sold by Government
agents, who refused permission to emigrants to leave the country by
other than the Fiume route.
Since then, however, Hungary has, I understand, modified its contract
with the Cunard Company in such a manner that it does not appear as if
the Government had actually gone into the business of exporting its own
citizens, and, instead of attempting to direct emigration through Fiume
by something amounting almost to force, it has rather sought to invite
traffic by creating at this post model accommodations for emigrants.
As a matter of fact the Government has, as a rule, attempted to
discourage emigration rather than increase it. Where that was not
possible it has still tried to maintain its hold upon its citizens in
America; to keep alive their interest in their native land and make the
emigration, as far as possible, a temporary absence, in order that the
state should not suffer a permanent loss of its labouring population,
and in order, apparently, that the stream of gold which had poured into
the country as a result of this emigration might not cease.
The actual amount of money which is brought back by returning
emigrants, or those living temporarily in America, cannot be definitely
determined. For example, not less than 47,000 emigrants returned to
Hungary in 1907. It is estimated, if I remember rightly, that each
returned emigrant brought home at least $200, while the average
immigrant, not permanently settled in America, sends back every year
about $120, which is probably more money than he could earn at home. In
the years 1900 to 1906, inclusive, there was sent to Hungary by money
orders alone, $22,917,566. In the year 1903 an official investigation
shows that, in addition to the money which went from America in other
ways, $17,000,000 was sent to Hungary through banks.
One result of this influx of money from America has been that the
peasant has been able to gratify his passion to obtain for himself
a little strip of land or increase the size of the farm he already
possesses. In fact, in certain places mentioned by Miss Balch in her
book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizen," the demand for land has been so
great that it has increased in value between 500 and 600 per cent.[1]
In one year, 1903, according to Miss Balch, 4,317 emigrants from one
county in Croatia sent home $560,860, which is an average of not quite
$130 per immigrant. With this money 4,116 homes were bettered, by
paying debts, buying more land, or making improvements.
These facts give, however, but a small indication of the influence
which immigration has had, directly and indirectly, upon the conditions
of life among the masses of the people in Hungary and other portions of
southeastern Europe. For one thing, in arousing the hopes, ambitions,
and discontent of the so-called "inferior" peoples, it has added fuel
to the racial conflicts of the kingdom.
The Slovak or the Croatian who comes to America does not at once lose
his interest in the political and social struggles of his native
land. On the contrary, in America, where he has opportunity to read
newspapers printed in his own language, and to freely discuss racial
policies in the societies and clubs which have been formed by the
different nationalities in many parts of the United States, the average
Slovak or Croatian in America is likely to take a more intelligent
interest in the struggle for national existence of his own people than
he took at home.
In the case of members of some of the minor nationalities it has
happened that, owing to the persistence with which the Hungarian
Government had discouraged their efforts to teach their own languages,
it is not until they have reached America that they have had
opportunity to read their mother-tongue.
Some indication of the interest which the different immigrant peoples
take in the struggles of the members of their own race, in their native
land, is given by the work which several of these nationalist societies
are doing in America. The National Slavonic Society organizes political
meetings, raises funds for Slovak political prisoners in Hungary, and
scatters Slovak literature for the purpose of arousing sympathy and
interest in the Slovak cause.
In his book, "Racial Problems in Hungary," Seton-Watson, who has made a
special study of the condition of the Slovaks, says:
"The returned Slovak emigrants who have saved money in the
United States are steadily acquiring small holdings in Hungary,
and helping to propagate ideas of freedom and nationality among
their neighbours.... They speedily learn to profit by the free
institutions of their adopted country, and to-day the 400,000
Slovaks of America possess a national culture and organization
which present a striking contrast to the cramped development of
their kinsmen in Hungary. There are more Slovak newspapers in
America than in Hungary; but the Magyars seek to redress the
balance by refusing to deliver these American journals through the
Hungarian post-office. Everywhere among the emigrants, leagues,
societies, and clubs flourish undisturbed; ... these societies
do all in their power to awaken Slovak sentiment, and contribute
materially to the support of the Slovak press in Hungary."[2]
Seton-Watson adds that "the independence and confidence of the returned
emigrants are in striking contrast with the pessimism and passivity
of the elder generation." It is for this reason, perhaps, that the
Magyars, who represent the "superior race" in Hungary, say that
"America has spoiled the Slovak emigrant."
In travelling across Hungary from Fiume to Budapest, and thence to
Cracow, Poland, I passed successively through regions and districts
inhabited by many different racial types, but I think I gained a
more vivid notion of the strange mixture of races which make up the
population of the Dual Monarchy from what I saw in Fiume than in any
other part of the country. In Budapest, which is the great melting pot
of the races in Hungary, there is much the same uniformity in the dress
and manners of the different races that one meets in any other large
and cosmopolitan city. Fiume, on the contrary, has a much larger number
of people who seem to be still in touch with the customs and life of
their native villages, and have not yet learned to be ashamed to wear
the quaint and picturesque costumes of the regions to which they belong.
Among the most striking costumes which I remember to have seen were
those of the Montenegrin traders, with their red caps, embroidered
vests, and the red sashes around their waists, which made them look
like brigands. After these, perhaps the most picturesque costumes
which I saw were worn by a troop of Dalmatian girls, the most striking
feature of whose costume was the white woollen leggings, tied at the
knee with ribbons. One figure in particular that I recall was that of
a little woman striding through the streets of Fiume, driving a little
train of beautiful cream-coloured oxen.
All these distinctions of costume emphasized each other by contrast,
and as they each signified differences in traditions, prejudices, and
purposes of the people to whom they belonged, they gave one a sort of
picture of the clash of races in this strange and interesting country.
Even among those races which are no longer divided by costume and
habits, racial distinctions seem to be more clearly drawn than at
Budapest. For example, to a large extent the business of the city seems
to be monopolized by Germans and Jews. The Government officials are
Magyars, but the bulk of the population are Italians and Croatians.
As a matter of fact there are three distinct cities, which commonly
go under the name of Fiume. There is the modern city, with its opera
house, its handsome official buildings, which is Magyar; the elder
city, with its narrow, gossiping streets and Roman triumphal arch,
which is Italian, and, finally, just across the canal, or "fiume,"
which seems to have given the name to the city, is a handsome new
Croatian town which is officially distinct from the rest of the city,
having its own mayor and town officials.
Fiume itself has an exceptional position in the Kingdom of Hungary.
It is what was known in the Middle Ages as a "free city," with a
governor and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament. The mayor, I
understand, however, is an Italian, who has married a Croatian wife.
This alliance of two races in one family seems to have a certain
advantage in the rather tumultuous politics of the city, for I was told
that when the Croatians, as sometimes happens, go to the mayor's house
in procession, with their grievances, the mayor's wife has been able to
help her husband by addressing her own people in their native language.
The most interesting thing I saw in Fiume, however, was the immense
emigration building, which has accommodations, as I remember, for
something like 3,000 emigrants. Here are the offices of the Hungarian
emigration officials, and in this same building are received and cared
for, until the next succeeding sailing, the accumulations of the stream
of emigration which flows steadily out at this port from every part of
the kingdom.
Here the emigrants, after they have been medically examined, given a
bath and their clothes disinfected, are detained until the time of
embarkation. In company with United States Consul Slocum, from whom I
received much valuable information, I visited the emigration building
and spent a large part of one day looking into the arrangements and
talking, through an interpreter, with emigrants from different parts of
the country who were waiting there to embark.
Under his guidance I inspected the barracks, furnished with rows
upon rows of double-decked iron beds, observed the machinery for
disinfecting the clothing of emigrants, visited the kitchen, tasted the
soup, and finally saw all the different nationalities march in together
to dinner, the women in one row and the men in another. The majority of
them were of Magyar nationality; good, wholesome, sturdy, and thrifty
people they seemed. They were from the country districts. Some of them
were persons of property, who were going to America to earn enough
money to pay off mortgages with which their lands were burdened. Very
many of them had relatives, a brother, a sister, or a husband already
in America, and they seemed to be very well informed about conditions
in the new country where they were going.
The two most interesting figures that I noticed among the intended
emigrants were a tall, pallid, and barefooted girl, with rather
delicate and animated features, and a man in a linen blouse which hung
down to his knees, his feet and legs incased in a kind of moccason,
surmounted with leggings, bound with leather thongs. The girl was a
Ruthenian, who was going to meet relatives in America. The man, whom
I noticed looking, with what seemed to me rather envious interest and
curiosity, at a pair of American shoes on sale at one of the booths in
the big common hall, was a Roumanian.
Two of the emigrants with whom I talked had been in America before.
One of these, who understood a little English, seemed to be a leader
among the others. When I asked him the reason why he was going back to
America he spoke quite frankly and disparagingly about conditions in
the old country.
He said it was not so much the wages that led people to emigrate,
though they were small enough. But the worst of it was that there were
long intervals when it was not possible to get any work. Besides that,
the taxes were high.
"And then," he added, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his arm
with a gesture of impatience, "it is too tight here."
I suspect that this expresses the feeling of a good many emigrants who,
returning to their native country, have emigrated a second time. They
have found things in the old country "too tight" for comfort. There is
still room in America for people to spread out, and grow and find out
for themselves what they are capable of. As long as people find things
"too tight" they will move on. The plant stretches always toward the
light.
Among the emigrants with whom I had an opportunity to talk was a group
of Roumanians who had come up from Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen, as
they called it. They were a dark, silent sort of people, who hung very
closely together and looked at us out of the corners of their eyes.
When I sought to talk with them they seemed indisposed to answer my
questions, and finally one of them told the interpreter that they had
been instructed not to talk with any one until they reached America.
Considering the elaborate regulations which their Government has
imposed upon people seeking to leave Hungary, and the still more
elaborate regulations which our Government has imposed upon people
seeking to enter the United States, this did not particularly surprise
me.
Since these people were Roumanians, or Wallachs, from Siebenbürgen,
they may have had other reasons for not telling why they were leaving
the country. The Roumanians, although they proudly claim descent from
the Roman conquerors of this part of the world, are, nevertheless,
classed among the "inferior," as they are, in fact, among the most
ignorant, races in Hungary. As they have been particularly persistent
in advertising their wrongs to the rest of Europe, and have been
frequently punished for it, they may, perhaps, have learned that
silence is golden, particularly in the presence of Magyar officials.
When in Vienna I was seeking for information that would help me to
understand the racial situation in the Dual Monarchy, I found that
one of the most learned and brilliant writers on that subject was a
Roumanian who, while he was a student in a Roumanian academy in 1892,
had been arrested with other students and condemned to four years'
imprisonment for writing and circulating a pamphlet in which were
enumerated "acts of violence" committed against the other races of
Hungary by the "superior" Magyars.
The superiority of the dominant race seems, as a matter of fact, to be
the foundation stone of the political policy of the present government
in Hungary. In the last analysis it seems to be the major premise,
so to speak, of every argument which I happen to have heard or read
in justification of the policy which the Government has pursued in
reference to the other races of the monarchy. In fact, the "superiority
of the Magyar" race is responsible for most that is good and evil
in the history of Hungary for the past seventy years. It seems, for
example, to have been the chief source of inspiration for the heroic
struggle against Austria which began in 1848 and ended with the
independence of Hungary in 1867. It seems, also, to have been the goad
which has spurred on the impatient leaders of modern Hungary in their
hurry to overtake and surpass the progress of civilization in the rest
of Europe.
Unfortunately the ambition and success of the Magyars in their
effort to gain their political independence and preserve their
peculiar racial type from being lost and swallowed up by the other and
"inferior" peoples by whom it is surrounded have encouraged every other
nationality in a similar desire and determination.
"If it is good for the Magyars to preserve their language, customs, and
racial traditions," say the other races, in effect, "why is it not just
as important for us that we preserve ours?"
The reply of the Magyars is, in effect: "You have no language, no
history, no tradition worth keeping. In short, you are an inferior
race."
Naturally the argument does not end there. The other nationalities
reply by founding national schools and colleges to study and preserve
their peculiar language, traditions, and customs, while these
nationalities who have previously had no history proceed to make some.
Thus the doctrine of superiority of the Magyar race, which has been
so valuable in stimulating the Magyars to heroic efforts in behalf of
their own race, seems to have been just as valuable in stinging into
life the racial pride and loyalty of the other races. And thus, on
the whole, in spite of its incidental cruelties, the conflict of the
races in Hungary, like the struggle of the white and black races in the
South, seems to have done less harm than good. At least this is true
so far as it concerns the races which are down and are struggling up,
because oppression, which frequently stimulates the individual or the
race which suffers from it, invariably injures most the individual or
the race which inflicts it.
Most of the "acts of violence" of which the subordinate nations
complain are committed in the name of what is known as the "Magyar
State Idea," which seems to be little more, however, than the idea
that the Magyars must dominate, although they represent but 51 per
cent. of the population in Hungary proper and 45 per cent. of the total
population, including that of the annexed territory, Croatia-Slavonia.
So far is the Magyar race identified with the Government in Hungary
that it is punished as a kind of treason to say anything against the
Magyars. Most of the persons who are persecuted for political crimes
in Hungary seem to be charged either with panslavism, which is usually
little more than a desire of the Slavs to preserve their own national
existence, or with "incitement against the Magyar nationality."
On the part of the Magyars it does not seem to be any crime to speak
disrespectfully, or even contemptuously, of the other races. I have
observed that those writers who have sought to defend the "Magyar
State Idea" refer quite frankly to the Roumanians and the Slovaks as
"inferior races," who are not competent to govern themselves.
There is, likewise, a saying among the Magyars to the effect that "a
Slovak is not a human being," a notion that seems to spring up quite
naturally in the mind of any race which has accustomed itself to the
slavery and oppression of another race.
It is, however, all the more curious that such a saying should gain
currency in Hungary in view of the fact that Kossuth, the great
national hero of Hungary, was himself a Slovak.
One hears strange stories in Hungary of the methods which the dominant
race has employed to hold the other races in subjection. For example,
in the matter of elections, bribery, intimidation, and all the other
familiar methods for exploiting the vote of ignorant and simple-minded
people are carried on in a manner and to an extent which recalls the
days of Reconstruction in the Southern States.
In order to maintain the superior race in power, newspapers are
suppressed, schools are closed and the moneys for their support, which
have been collected for educational purposes, are confiscated by the
Government.
As an illustration of the lengths to which Hungary has gone in order
to maintain Magyar domination, it is said that when the Catholic
clergy, seeing the ravages which drink had made among Slovaks,
attempted to organize temperance societies among them, the Government
suppressed these organizations on the ground that they tended to foster
the sentiment of panslavism and so were in opposition to the "Magyar
State Idea." It is known, however, that the chief complaints against
these societies were from liquor dealers.
Apparently it is just as easy in Hungary as in America for selfish
persons to take advantage of racial prejudice and sentiment in order
to use it for their own ends. In fact, all that I saw and learned in
regard to the relation of the races in Hungary served to show me that
racial hatred works in much the same way, whether it exists among
people of the same colour but different speech, or among people of
different colour and the same speech.
If there are some points in which the relations of the races in
Hungary and the United States are similar, there are others in which
they differ. While Hungary is seeking to solve its racial problem
by holding down the weaker races and people, America is seeking to
accomplish the same result by lifting them up. In Hungary every effort
seems to be made to compel the so-called "inferior race" to give up
their separate language, to forget their national history, traditions,
and civilization--everything, in fact, which might inspire them, as
a people, with a desire or a proper ambition to win for themselves a
position of respect and consideration in the civilized world.
In America, on the contrary, each race and nationality is encouraged to
cultivate and take pride in everything that is distinctive or peculiar,
either in its traditions, racial traits, or disposition. I think I am
safe in saying that there is no country in the world where so many
different races of such different colours, habits, and traditions live
together in such peace and harmony as is true in the United States.
One reason for this is that there is no other country where "the man
farthest down" has more opportunity or greater freedom than in the
United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Charities Publication Committee, 1910.
[2] Quoted by Miss Balch in "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens," p. 116.