[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 with expectation to settle here permanently.
Unenterprising, unlettered, they are at the same time hardy, thrifty
and shrewd, honest and pious. They are undoubtedly highly endowed with
gifts of imagination and artistic expression for which in their American
conditions they find little or no outlet.
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