Over 338,000 Magyars immigrated to the United States during the decade
ending 1910. These brilliant and masterful folk are a Mongoloid blend
that swept from the steppes of Asia across eastern Europe a thousand
years ago. As the wave receded, the Magyars remained dominant in
beautiful and fertile Hungary, where their aggressive nationalism
still brings them into constant rivalry on the one hand with the
Germans of Austria and on the other with the Slavs of Hungary. The
immigrants to America are largely recruited from the peasantry. They
almost invariably seek the cities, where the Magyar neighborhoods can
be easily distinguished by their scrupulously neat housekeeping, the
flower beds, the little patches of well-swept grass, the clean
children, and the robust and tidy women. Among them is less illiteracy
than in any other group from eastern and southern Europe, excepting
the Finns, who are their ethnic brothers. As a rule they own their own
homes. They learn the English language quickly but unfortunately
acquire with it many American vices. Drinking and carousing are
responsible for their many crimes of personal violence. They are
otherwise a sociable, happy people, and the cafes kept by Hungarians
are islands of social jollity in the desert of urban strife.
In bold contrast to these ardent devotees of nationalism, the Jew, the
man of no country and of all countries, is an American immigrant still
to be considered.
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