In the seventies and early eighties, and even more recently, many of the Poles in north central Wisconsin purchased land and began to farm with less than $500, sometimes less than $300, capital. There are now few places where a foreigner can make a satisfactory beginning in agriculture with less than $1,500, and $5,000 or somewhat more is required where population is dense. In In a few instances, in old settlements, boys of the second or even of the third generation are renting land from their relatives or countrymen, because they have not been able to save enough by "working out" to purchase improved farms.

THE POLES AS FARMERS.

The Poles have made excellent pioneers. They have all of the qualifications, excepting, perhaps, resourcefulness and a high degree of initiative. They are independent and self-reliant, though clannish. No Polish colony visited needed artificial stimulus or charitable aid to support it. Some individuals have increased their incomes by working as farm laborers or as lumbermen when there was little work on the farm, but in general the farm has been the sole support almost from the first. Practically every Pole who owns a farm is exclusively a farmer; the members of the Ohio colony are the most notable exception.

The

They become more efficient husbandmen as time goes on. sons are outdoing the older generation and are growing more skillful year by year. The contrast between the first and the third generations is very noticeable in the careful tillage, well-constructed houses and barns, fine herds of cattle, and the general evidences of thrift and prosperity. Brick houses are common in some old settlements that a few years ago contained but rude log huts or unpainted frame dwellings. With hardly an exception the Polish communities have shown material progress; in some instances advance has been slow.

The Poles studied are not students of agriculture; they work by rule of thumb. Nevertheless the evidences of thrift, prosperity, and rising standards of comfort displayed in some of the early colonies-for example, at Radom, Ill., or Independence, Wis. are an agreeable surprise. Here the second stage of agricultural development is getting under way. The original owners, grown well-to-do through hard labor and the increase in the value of landed property, are turning their farms over to their sons, whose cooperation has been responsible for much of the prosperity of the parents; the sons rent the old farm and the parents move into the neighboring village, or live in a separate house on a few acres near the farm. In these communities large red barns, numerous well-constructed outbuildings, and excellent frame or brick farmhouses line the country roads. Land that twenty years ago was heavy forest or unproductive swamp is now 80 to 90 per cent in tillage, producing profitably.

In many instances the Poles have bought up large tracts of poor land, which American or German or Norwegian farmers had avoided as impossible for agricultural purposes. It has taken a long time to bring this land into cultivation and more years to make agriculture profitable, facts that must be borne in mind when estimating the progress of the Pole. Like the Italian, the Pole is a steady, untiring day laborer, and in clearing land, ditching, draining, and grubbing, he and his wife have succeeded as have few others.

THE FUTURE OF POLISH RURAL IMMIGRATION.

The rural sections investigated showing the largest accretions of Poles at the present time are the New England Polish settlements and the newer colonies in Wisconsin, which are being stimulated by immigrant agents and real-estate men. The influx in the latter case seems to be from industrial centers rather than direct from abroad. When the way is open, real-estate agents who sell land on commission readily induce small companies of mill workers, who were once farmers and who have accumulated a little money, to visit the land open for purchase. The land is sold at a rather high price, but on very reasonable terms. The successful Polish farmers are pointed out to the land seekers and many inducements to settlement are offered. In a number of townships in northern Wisconsin small Polish colonies of this type have been founded. Most of them are progressing slowly, and although some of the farmers are discouraged few are giving up their farms. It is of interest that numerous small settlements in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and northern Wisconsin, composed of young men from the older Polish settlements, are growing up. Land in the original locality is too high to purchase and the sons have gone West.

In the East the influx is directly from abroad, and while the increase in number of Polish farmers is not great, the movement to New England farms seems steady and permanent. There is an increasing number of Polish farm laborers in the North Atlantic States, partly seasonal laborers and partly permanent farm hands. The Pole usually does not care for employment that keeps him busy but two or three months in the year, nor does he desire uncertain employment. Consequently, most of the Poles soon leave seasonal employment and become permanent farm laborers and later farmers for themselves.

There has been no important stream of Polish immigration to the South or Southwest. The Texas settlements are not growing rapidly by accretions from without, but there are some new colonies forming.

BOHEMIANS AND OTHER RACES IN AGRICULTURE.

BOHEMIANS.

The largest body of Bohemian farmers is found in the prairie States of the upper Mississippi Valley and in Nebraska and Texas, where large and flourishing Bohemian settlements have been long established. The Commission made no detailed study of any Bohemian community except the small group of more or less scattered families on the Connecticut Highland. Several old settlements in Texas were visited, and a general summary of the Bohemian communities in that State appears in the complete report of the Commission.

The Twelfth Census figures on occupations showed 71,389 Bohemian males of the first generation and 32,707 of the second engaged in gainful occupations in 1900. Of this number 32 per cent of the first generation and nearly 43 per cent of the second generation were engaged in agriculture. These percentages are large and bear witness to the distinctively agricultural character of the Bohemian population; taken together, more than 35 per cent of all breadwinners of Bohemian origin were agriculturists in 1900. The high per

centage of farmers, 25.8 per cent of the first generation, is noteworthy; only the Norwegians, with 38.3 per cent, the Danes, with 32.4 per cent, and the Swiss, with 27 per cent, showed higher proportions of farmers."

In 1909 agents of the Commission visited 30 Bohemian settlements in 12 counties of Texas and estimated in the settlements visited 3,269 Bohemian farm families.' There are several other Bohemian rural settlements in the State, but those visited contain the greater part of the Bohemian farmers in the Southwest. The first settlements in Texas were made in Fayette County early in the fifties, where there are now 9 townships with groups of Bohemians on farms. The establishment of colonies or settlements continued through the seventies and up to 1885. In the counties visited only three settlements of recent establishment, were found-1898, 1906, and 1909, respectively; all three are small communities, the largest having a population of 30 families, and all are in the most southerly counties, in the Brownsville trucking district.

None of the Texas colonies are large, the most populous being one of some 400 families in McLennan County. In all of the colonies there are farmers who came to Texas with their parents when small children; there are also young farmers of the second generation. The settlements are now growing from within, and so thoroughly American are many of them that no one speaks of them as foreign or immigrant. Since 1890 the influx of immigrants from abroad to the older settlements has been small. There has been, however, an increased Bohemian immigration to Texas since 1905. The breaking up of the large cattle ranches has put many acres of good land on the market in small tracts, and foreigners of several races have taken advantage of the opportunity to buy unimproved land. Just how many Bohemians have purchased land or become tenant farmers within the last decade there is no ready means of ascertaining. The Bohemians now settling, not only in Texas but in other States, are men with more money than the arrivals of three decades or more ago. They have more capital to start with and they are more immediately successful than those who came when the Southwest was almost entirely wild and untilled.

The Texas Bohemians have engaged in several lines of agriculture, but nearly all have had something to do with cotton raising. In contrast to the native Texans, the Bohemians, like the Germans and Poles, raise sufficient produce on their cotton farms to sustain their families and their work stock, and by this means lessen their store accounts. As is usual in cotton districts tenancy is common in almost all settlements. Among the Bohemians three classes of farmers are tenants on cotton farms: (1) The recent arrivals in the locality who have not sufficient money to buy land; (2) the young men of the second generation who either live at home with their parents and rent small acreages of cotton land, or who are young farmers launching out for themselves; (3) a number of apparently permanent tenants, or perhaps "croppers"-marginal farmers who, because of lack of thrift, skill, or ambition, do not rise to the owning class. The tenants are

a For more detailed information see the Reports of the Immigration Commission on Occupations, vol. 28 (S. Doc. No. 282, 61st Cong., 2d sess.), and on Agriculture, vols. 21 and 22 (S. Doc. No. 633, pt. 24, 61st Cong., 2d sess.).

b Including a few families who live in small rural villages.

sometimes migratory, moving from one farm to another in the neighborhood or from one neighborhood to another in the hope of finding better land or securing more favorable terms; these comprise a small percentage of the total farm operators. The two classes first described are tenants temporarily only, and intend to purchase farms as soon as sufficient money has been accumulated; if the crops are poor, cotton low, or land high in price, it may be several years before the farmer emerges from the tenant class.

In the Bohemian communities in rural Texas there is noticeable the almost inevitable shift that takes place in the rural population when old improved land, valued at high rates, is situated within migrating distance of equally fertile wild land on sale at a low price. The movement of Bohemians to lands in the northern, western, or southern parts of Texas is a significant illustration of this population shift. The old settlers are selling out at good prices and buying more land elsewhere. Frequently the children move with them. Sometimes they move in groups, sometimes singly, but they are likely to settle in groups in the "Panhandle" or in western Texas and start a new Bohemian town. These persons are usually well-to-do practical farmers. They make progress much more rapidly than they did when they came direct from Bohemia and settled on their first purchases. The Bohemian is thoroughly respected as a farmer, and stands very well commercially and as a citizen. That the second generation is assimilating rapidly is indicated by the intermarriages, which are now becoming rather frequent occurrences, not only between the Germans and Bohemians, but also between the Bohemians and native Americans. The Bohemians are faithful supporters of schools and churches; very few are illiterate; almost none of the second generation over 10 years of age are unable to read and write English. The young women are teachers in the schools and the young men not on farms engage largely in clerical pursuits, for except on farms there are few Bohemian manual laborers.

The aspect of a Bohemian agricultural community is prepossessing. Nearly all the land-and the Bohemians own some of the finest black, waxy soil in Texas-is in cultivation; grain, hay, and pasture fields are interspersed with cotton areas, many of the farms are fenced, and the farmhouses and outbuildings look neat, well built, and comfortable. In some places, where the boll weevil has ravaged the cotton fields for years, there is discouragement, but the Bohemians are among the first to substitute a still more diversified agriculture for the one-crop cotton system, which they had already modified to some extent. More than this, they are beginning to combat the weevil successfully with careful, early cultivation, and quick-maturing plants. It is of interest that most of the Bohemians in Texas have continued to be farmers. Some small towns have grown up in the midst of the settlements, but the number of industries or commercial enterprises in which Bohemians engage is few. The old settlers remain farmers and the young are moving away much less commonly than the native-born of most foreign rural communities. The aggregate of incumbrances on the Bohemian farms visited is not large. Probably a large majority of the farmers have been out of debt for years. They have usually invested their savings in additional land or improvements on the old farm. The state banks, numerous throughout the black belt of Texas, have many

Bohemian depositors. Many, too, are lending money to their neighbors, a practice common in prosperous western farm neighborhoods. Financially the Bohemians have a good rating.

BOHEMIANS IN THE EAST.

The account of the Bohemians and Slovaks on the Connecticut hills deals in some detail with the financial problems and the conditions of agriculture on the worn-out ridges east of the Connecticut River. Most of the Bohemians here typify the movement of foreigners from industrial establishments, where they have been able to save a little capital, to the rural districts. If they have remained in the cities long enough to get in touch with the currents of American life and thought, to learn something of the English language, of business and of industry, but not long enough to become so attached to the life of the city that there will always be a harking back and a longing for the urban comforts left behind, then the period of industrial labor which fills in the hiatus between the arrival of the immigrant in America and the comparative isolation on a farm is valuable; otherwise, the term in industry is likely to disqualify the foreigner for rural life. In any event, the Bohemians in Connecticut are doing as well as can be expected on the infertile (worn-out) soil on which they are settled. They are comparatively few in number, settled through the instrumentality of advertisements in Bohemian papers and the solicitation of real-estate agents. They have come singly or by twos and threes within a few years; naturally the settlement of a first farmer serves as a nucleus around which others gather. The settlement of a few foreigners gives the real-estate dealer a talking point, and he finds it easy to sell farms lying near the land owned by the purchasers' countrymen. They can scarcely be called pioneers, for they are buying old homesteads on traveled roads not far from small villages, within easy communication with large cities, and but a few miles from a railroad. The city resident buying a country estate would select just such a location. But in respect to quality of land and ability to develop a self-sufficing agriculture, the pioneer on virgin soil is more favorably situated. The obstacles on the New England farms are several-the necessity of feeding the soil before it will produce, the small acreage adapted to cultivated crops, the necessity of raising a specialized commercial crop in order to supply ready capital, and the impossibility of raising and marketing such a crop with profit, owing both to inadequacy of marketing facilities and to lack of the requisite knowledge and skill necessary to produce a specialized crop.

These Bohemians seemed to be unusually capable, but most of them were credulous and knew little of land values except real-estate prices in New York City. Many of them bought land from their own countrymen and were unsuspicious of fraud. Most paid a large percentage of the purchase price in cash and moved at once, the "stock and tools" procured with the farm being the incentive to an immediate removal from the city to the farms. Few found it possible to make a living at once, and many still supplement their incomes by industrial earnings. The Bohemians sustain an excellent reputation both as neighbors and as farmers. They are intelligent and, in general, ambitious.