language, these people live in the pale glory of a heroic past. Most
of those who come to America are peasants who have been crushed by
land feudalism, kept in ignorance by political intolerance, and bound
in superstition by a reactionary ecclesiasticism. The brutality with
which they treat their women, their disregard for sanitary measures,
and their love for strong drink are evidences of the survival of
medievalism in the midst of modern life, as are their notions of
class prerogative and their concept of the State. Buffeted by the
world, their language suppressed, their nationalism reviled, poor,
ignorant, unskilled, these children of the open country come to the
ugliest spots of America, the slums of the cities, and the choking
atmosphere of the mines. Here, crowded in their colonies, jealously
shepherded by their church, neglected by the community, they remain
for an entire generation immune to American influences. According to
estimates given by Emily G. Balch,[40] between four and six million
persons of Slavic descent are now dwelling among us, and their
fecundity is amazing. Equally amazing is the indifference of the
Government and of Americans generally to the menace involved in the
increasing numbers of these inveterate aliens to institutions that are
fundamentally American.

The Lithuanians and Magyars are often classed with the Slavs. They
hotly resent this inclusion, however, for they are distinct racial
strains of ancient lineage. An adverse fate has left the Lithuanian
little of his old civilization except his language. Political and
economic suppression has made sad havoc of what was once a proud and
prosperous people. Most of them are now crowded into the Baltic
province that bears their name, and they are reduced to the mental and
economic level of the Russian moujik. In 1868 a famine drove the first
of these immigrants to America, where they were soon absorbed by the