In some of the counties an exchange of
population has been taking place for a decade or more. The land
dwelling Americans are moving into the towns and cities. The farms
are offered for sale. Enterprising Slavic real estate dealers are not
slow in persuading their fellow countrymen to invest their savings in
land.
The Slavonic infiltration has been most marked in New England,
especially in the Connecticut Valley. From manufacturing centers like
Chicopee, Worcester, Ware, Westfield, and Fitchburg, areas of Polish
settlements radiate in every direction, alien spokes from American
hubs. Here are little farming villages ready made in attractive
settings whose vacant houses invite the alien peasant. A Polish family
moves into a sedate colonial house; often a second family shares the
place, sometimes a third or a fourth, each with a brood of children
and often a boarder or two. The American families left in the
neighborhood are scandalized by this promiscuity, by the bare feet and
bare heads, by the unspeakable fare, the superstition and credulity,
and illiteracy and disregard for sanitary measures, and by the
ant-like industry from starlight to starlight. Old Hadley has become a
prototype of what may become general if this racial infiltration is
not soon checked. In 1906 the Poles numbered one-fifth of the
population in that town, owned one-twentieth of the land, and
produced two-thirds of the babies.
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