SLAVIC EFFORTS BEFORE WORLD WAR I
In the preceding chapters, dealing with the gradual development of an
intellectual interest in Slavic questions, we have largely ignored the
activity of Slavic groups in the United States. This was deliberate, for
the early stages of Slavic study were almost completely apart from the
work of the Slavs themselves and involved only those persons who had
come to the United States and achieved prominence or success outside of
their own communities and background.
These early Slavic efforts could make little imprint upon the American
public, for the first steps were taken under most adverse conditions.
The Slavic masses were composed for the most part of the underprivileged
groups who had come to America in the hope of working for a few years
and then returning. Later they became American citizens, but until 1914
a surprising percentage of the Slavs had not taken out citizenship
papers.
For their self-protection and mutual advantage these masses had formed
their own churches and fraternal organizations. There were in the
nineteenth century many difficulties to be encountered by each and the
communities lived apart with relatively little social or political
contact with the rest of the population.
As entire families began to settle, their children were compelled to
attend the American public schools where instruction was given only in
English. It was not long before the preservation of their native
languages became a burning question, to be acted on by the establishment
of language schools held outside of regular school hours, in the late
afternoons, evenings and on Saturdays. For example, the first Czech
school was founded in 1862 by the _Slovanska Lipa_ Society of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. In 1864, the first Czech schools were established in Chicago
and, in 1866, in New York. The example of the Czechs was followed later
by the Poles, the Slovaks, the Croatians, the Serbs and the Ukrainians.
These schools were conducted by the best educated men or women in the
community, though this did not of necessity mean much. Classes were
usually held in the building of a church or other organization, but
sometimes in private homes or in public school buildings, the use of
which was given free by the American school authorities. The textbooks
were inadequate, often being those which the teacher had studied years
before in the home country. Sometimes they were heavily laden with
political propaganda, as were the books prepared for the Carpathian
population by the Hungarian government which exercised a considerable
influence through the Greek Catholic priests who were Magyaron in
tendency as a result of their early upbringing. The situation was made
worse by the fact that the schools in the homelands were themselves
unsatisfactory, either in the hands of the alien rulers or the products
of the vague stirrings of the population to secure their own more or
less illegal schools.[28]
Despite all this, these schools did achieve some success but not enough
to be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the problem. Life in
America, even with its lack of legal barriers or restraints, was
unfavorable to active continuation of a foreign tongue. The contrast
between these impromptu courses and the developing American school
system was too striking to escape the attention of the pupils in the two
types of schools as well as the more intelligent leaders of the
community. In addition to this, these schools failed to give the
students an adequate picture of the progress that their relatives at
home were making.
The Roman Catholic schools were gradually remodelled on the normal
parochial school system. The teachers were, for the most part, nuns and
brothers from orders working among a particular national group. Their
quality of teaching was often quite low but the Church schools did enjoy
the possibility of incorporating the innovations which were coming into
the parochial schools. Thus as the parochial schools were improved, so
were the foreign schools under Church auspices.
In the Orthodox and Catholic Uniat Churches, such instruction was
usually given by the dyak or cantor, a layman who superintended the
choirs and took a part in the services. These men had some education but
little training in teaching and their efforts were largely directed
along the same lines as in their homelands.
The Protestant and anti-clerical groups endeavored to find competent
laymen. These stressed the holding of classes in some lay building or on
the property of some secular organization.
As early as 1881, a journal in Johnson County, Iowa, the _Slovan
Americky_, started a campaign to raise money for a Czech college in
America. The newspaper believed that it could accomplish its purpose if
it succeeded in raising $20,000. The proposal, being launched by a
single newspaper, did not secure the support of rival papers and the
entire enterprise was dropped as a failure.[29]
Out of this chaotic and thoroughly unsatisfactory situation two
tendencies became evident just before World War I. Those Catholic
schools which had acquired some stability and organization began to take
the shape of the other parochial schools and where there was sufficient
demand and a sufficient concentration of worshippers, they began to
approximate the parochial high schools and then to pass over to be two
or three year colleges. The work of these was still not of high calibre
but the leaders were constantly striving to make them so. Thus, the
Czech Benedictines founded a school in Chicago in 1887. This passed
through the usual changes and after its removal to Lisle, Illinois, in
1901 it was reorganized as St. Procopius College, now a duly accredited
Catholic institution. St. Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, with a
marked emphasis on Slovak, is another of these institutions.
We find the same activity among the Poles. St. Mary’s Seminary, Orchard
Lake, Michigan, early included Polish in its curriculum, as did St.
Francis Seminary, Milwaukee. Various religious orders have long
conducted courses in the Polish language on the high school level in
various centers of population. The Polish Roman Catholic Union, with its
library, was highly developed by Mieczyslaw Haiman, especially in
publishing studies of the career of such Polish soldiers in the United
States as Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the other Poles who fought in the
American Revolution. The Polish Historical Society also has done
outstanding work. All these represent the natural development of the
Poles and their descendants in America, and deserve more than passing
mention.
At the turn of the century, the fraternal organizations also began to
give the question of schools due consideration. Almost all appointed
committees on education and they too decided that the primary need was
the foundation of special colleges where instruction could be given in
the language of the homeland. Thus, in 1902 there was formed in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, an institution, _Matice Vyssoho Vzdelani_, a center of
higher studies, by Bohumil Simek and G. F. Severa to work for the
establishment of a Czech college, but it also met with no success.
In 1903, the Polish National Alliance also created a committee on
education and schools, which worked for ten years and then in 1912, at
Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, opened the Polish National Alliance
College which was incorporated in 1914. Although it was rather on the
level of a high school, it profited by the opportunity to establish a
branch of the Student Army Training Corps during World War I. Its first
rector was Professor Romuald Piatkowski. In 1915, the work of the high
school or academy was augmented by the foundation of a Technical
Institute. It was in this status that the institution passed into the
next general period.[30]
Other forces were at work, however, to preserve the native languages by
introducing the Slavic languages into the already established American
institutions. While the motives were varied the efforts were made first
by the less clerical and the more Protestant parts of the population.
Thus, in 1887, the Congregational Church in Ohio persuaded the
authorities of Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio[31] to introduce a
course in Czech for candidates to the Congregational ministry who would
minister to the Czech communities. Professor Louis F. Miskovsky was
appointed instructor, and his became the first chair of Slavic studies
in an American institution. Oberlin’s program differed from the later
attempts at Harvard and elsewhere in that it was frankly intended only
to teach the language. Any Slavic cultural work in a broader sense was
insignificant. It is small wonder then that on Professor Miskovsky’s
death in the 1920’s, the chair was quickly abandoned and the money used
for a course of lectures on Central European affairs given by Professor
Oskar Jaszy, a liberal Hungarian who opposed both Communism and the
regime of Admiral Horthy.
In somewhat the same way, and for the same purpose, instruction in the
Polish language was introduced into Notre Dame University in 1909.
Efforts to include a Slavic language, usually Czech, in the curricula of
state and private colleges were particularly intense in Nebraska and
Iowa.[32] In these states, the Czech population had been among the
earliest settlers; many had prospered and secured appointive and
elective posts in the state governments, which gave them the opportunity
to work for the introduction of their native language into various
institutions.
In 1903, Professor Bohumil Simek of the University of Iowa and F. J.
Pipal, a student of the University of Nebraska, established at Lincoln
the first of the Komensky Educational Clubs. These clubs were intended
to unite the Czech-Americans who had some education. The movement, which
included plans for building a monument to the Czech educator Jan Amos
Komensky (Comenius), spread extensively and finally included twenty-nine
societies, chiefly in the states of Nebraska and Iowa, although there
were some in Texas, Chicago and New York. For a while this loosely knit
organization was even able to publish a periodical bulletin.[33]
These clubs petitioned at once for the establishment of Czech language
courses at the University of Nebraska. Although the request was turned
down on the ground that there was a lack of interest in such a project
among the Czechs, a new attempt was made during the winter of 1906–07.
John Rosicky, an outstanding publisher of Czech newspapers in Nebraska,
and Vaclav Bures, both of Omaha, met the Regents of the state university
along with Frank Rejcha, a member of the Nebraska legislature. The
Chancellor of the university, in refusing the request, proposed a
political deal whereby a tax of one mill would be laid on certain
railroad properties and earmarked for the university. By clever
lobbying, the Czechs secured passage for the bill. Then the Governor of
the state cut the grants to the university and the Chancellor again
declined to set up a Slavonic department. Later the same summer,
however, another request was more successful and courses were started in
the fall of 1907.
The first instructor was Jeffrey Dolezal Hrbek, a graduate of Lafayette
College, Easton, Pennsylvania, and, at the time, a student in the
University of Iowa. He was appointed head of the new Department of
Slavonic and instructor in the Germanic languages and literatures.
Unfortunately Hrbek, a young man of great promise, became ill and died
on December 4, 1907.
He was succeeded by his sister Sarka B. Hrbkova, who graduated from the
University of Iowa in 1909 and received an M.A. from Nebraska in 1914.
Under her period of teaching, the department flourished. In 1910 she was
named adjunct professor; in 1914, an assistant professor; and in 1918,
she became a full professor. She was also very active during the war in
various aspects of Czech-American relations.
During World War I, the outburst against the use of German spread in
Nebraska to all foreign languages. The courses in the university were
dropped and the department was abolished, while Professor Hrbkova moved
to New York and became the manager of the Czechoslovak Section of the
Foreign Language Information Service, ancestor of the Common Council for
American Unity. The outburst was even worse against Czech courses in the
lower schools and in 1919 the so-called Siman Bill provided that “no
person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private,
denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any
person in any language other than the English language.” This was made
more stringent in 1921 but in 1923, the measures were declared
unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.
In the meantime, the break in the university courses was less prolonged.
In 1919–20, during the meeting of the State Constitutional Convention,
two members of Czech origin raised the question of a renewal of the
courses. After negotiations, the teaching of Czech was renewed in the
autumn of 1920 under Professor Orin Stepanek. Stepanek, a native of
Nebraska, received his A.B. from the University of Nebraska in 1913 and
an A.M. from Harvard in 1914. After service in the U.S. Marine Corps he
returned to Harvard and then went to serve under General Snejdarek on
the Magyar frontier. After this, he returned to Nebraska and there
became Assistant Professor of English. While there, he was also giving
courses in Czech and Russian under the auspices of the Department of
Modern Language and, later, of Romance Languages.
We have stressed the history of the establishment of Slavic work at the
University of Nebraska because the Czechs were sufficiently numerous and
influential to be able to reach the university authorities and the state
legislature. More than that, they were persistent and finally succeeded
in securing recognition. Yet in its way, the same type of politics, in
addition to formal applications, was going on with various degrees of
success in many different places.
At about the same time, Czech was included in the University of Iowa
where Miss Anna Heyberger conducted the work. Still later she changed to
Coe College at Cedar Rapids where she became Professor of French and
took a doctorate, with a dissertation on the Czech educator Jan Amos
Comenius, at the University of Paris. Alois Barta was then giving
instructions at Dubuque College and Seminary. For a while before World
War I, B. Prokosch gave courses in Czech at the University of Wisconsin
and Leon Zelenka Lerando at Ohio State University but more lasting
results were obtained by Mr. Charles Knizek at the University of Texas,
where Czech has continued almost without a break since its
introduction.[34] At this time, still other developments, largely
connected with the various churches, were ensuing. For example, Reverend
Andrew Slabey was appointed to the International Baptist Seminary in
Montclair, New Jersey, an institution greatly concerned with training
clergymen for missionary work among various non-English groups and
extensively staffed for such foreign languages as Slovak, Ukrainian and
Hungarian. On the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of the
Aleutian Islands and North America established a small Russian seminary
at Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was later moved to Tenafly, New Jersey,
and its head was Reverend Leonid Turkevich, the present Archbishop
Leonty of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America.
We could extend this list even further, but the institutions at this
period cared for little more than the giving of elementary instruction
in a Slavic language, usually either Czech or Polish. The period
witnessed the publication of a considerable number of elementary
grammars, dictionaries and readers. Many of these were not of high
quality but they did reflect the growing maturity of the various Slavic
communities and their efforts to secure the introduction of their
languages into the curricula of American institutions. Furthermore, at
this period, it was rare that any person in one of these smaller state
institutions could secure a post exclusively in Slavic studies. The best
and most scholarly were compelled to carry almost a full load in some
other subject. But the mere fact that this was possible accents the
increasing number of young Slavs who were securing college and
university educations. The situation was still not healthy but at the
beginning of World War I it was by no means as hopeless as it had seemed
earlier.