From the little province of Carniola come the Slovenians, usually
known as "Griners" (from the German _Krainer_, the people of the
Krain), a fragment of the Slavic race that has become much more
assimilated with the Germans who govern them than any other of their
kind. Their national costume has all but vanished and with it the
virile traditions of their forefathers. They began coming to America
in the sixties, and in the seventies they founded an important colony
at Joliet, Illinois. Since 1892 their numbers have increased rapidly,
until today about 100,000 live in the United States. Over one-half of
these immigrants are to be found in the steel and mining towns of
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, where the large majority of them are
unskilled workmen. Among the second generation, however, are to be
found a number of successful merchants.
All these numerous peoples have inherited in common the impassive,
patient temperament and the unhappy political fate of the Slav. Their
countries are mere eddies left by the mighty currents of European
conquest and reconquest, backward lands untouched by machine industry
and avoided by capital, whose only living links with the moving world
are the birds of passage, the immigrants who flit between the mines
and cities of America and these isolated European villages.
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