The Pole, however, is more independent and progressive than the Slovak, his brother from the northeastern corner of Hungary.  For many generations this segment of the Slav race has been pitifully crushed.  Turks, Magyars, and Huns have taken delight in oppressing him.  An early, sporadic migration of Slovaks to America received a sudden impulse in 1882.  About 200,000 have come since then, and perhaps twice that number of persons of Slovak blood now dwell in the mining and industrial centers of the United States.  Many of them, however, return to their native villages.  They keep aloof from things American and only too often prefer to live in squalor and ignorance.  Their social life is centered in the church, the saloon, and the lodge.  It is asserted that their numerous organizations have a membership of over 100,000, and that there were almost as many Slovak newspapers in America as in Hungary.[38]

Little Russia, the seat of turmoil, is the home of the Ruthenians, or Ukranians.  They are also found in southeastern Galicia, northern Hungary, and in the province of Bukowina.  They have migrated from all these provinces and about 350,000, it is estimated, now reside in the United States.  They, too, are birds of passage, working in the mines and steel mills for the coveted wages that shall free them from debt at home and insure their independence.  Such respite as they take from their labors is spent in the saloon, in the club rooms over the saloon, or in church, where they hear no English speech and learn nothing of American ways.

It is impossible to estimate the total number of Russian Slavs in the United States, as the census figures until recently included as “Russian” all nationalities that came from Russia.  They form the smallest of the Slavic groups that have migrated to America.  From 1898 to 1909 only 66,282 arrived, about half of whom settled in Pennsylvania and New York.  It is surprising to note, however, that every State in the Union except Utah and every island possession except the Philippines has received a few of these immigrants.  The Director of Emigration at St. Petersburg in 1907 characterized these people as “hardy and industrious,” and “though illiterate they are intelligent and unbigoted."[39]

So much in brief for the North Slavs.  Of the South Slavs, the Bulgarians possess racial characteristics which point to an intermixture in the remote past with some Asiatic strain, perhaps a Magyar blend.  Very few Bulgarian immigrants, who come largely from Macedonia, arrived before the revolution of 1904, when many villages in Monastir were destroyed.  For some years they made Granite City, near St. Louis, the center of their activities but, like the Serbians, they are now well scattered throughout the country.  In Seattle, Butte, Chicago, and Indianapolis they form considerable colonies.  Many of them return yearly to their native hills, and it is too early to determine how fully they desire to adapt themselves to American ways.