Pipifiiisfiipjr 
 
 ii 
 
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
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 THE GIFT OF 
 
 1891 
 
 zs". m/ f^^ 
 
 r-r- 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 JV 6835.B82 
 immigration abuses; giimpses a 
 
'/,^J, 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021182765 
 
IMMIGRATION ABUSES 
 
 GLIMPSES OF HUNGARY 
 AND HUNGARIANS 
 
 A NARRATIVE OF THE EXPERIENCES OF AN AMERICAN IMMIGRANT INSPECTOR 
 
 WHILE ON DUTY IN HUNGARY, TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF REVIEW 
 
 OF THAT country's HISTORY AND PRESENT TROUBLES 
 
 BY 
 
 MARCUS BRAUN 
 
 Late United States Immigrant Inspector 
 
 Published by 
 THE PEARSON ADVERTISING CO. 
 
 150 Nassau Street, New York 
 
Copyright, 1906, by 
 Marcus Braun 
 
PREFACE 
 
 When a little over three years ago I had been entrusted with 
 the important work of "Special Immigrant Inspector," and sent 
 abroad with a view of gathering information to be of use and of 
 service to my government, which had appointed me, I had but 
 one sole and exclusive desire, namely, to do my work faithfully. 
 
 To say the least, I honestly believe I did all that my superiors 
 had a right to expect of me. 
 
 That I would be confronted with the obstacles which were 
 hurled into my path, I could not possibly conceive. That I would 
 be made to suffer gross indignities in the land of my birth, because 
 corrupt officials were under the impression that my investigations, 
 resulting in discoveries which shed the proper light upon them, 
 laying bare conditions shameful and disgraceful in my old home, 
 ought not to be exposed, because a certain feeling of love so in- 
 spiringly and beautifully described in the lines of Scott, beginning 
 thus: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead," would cause 
 me to be less faithful, less loyal, less true to my official oath, and 
 that I would allow myself to be used by them for the advancement 
 of their nefarious practices by believing what they told me, I cer- 
 tainly never dreamed. 
 
 And, I am not ashamed to confess, had I only dreamed of it 
 I should have preferred to be assigned to another branch of the 
 service. 
 
 This latter feeling prompted me to add to my booklet the 
 
4 Immigration Abuses 
 
 tribute of admiration, intermingled with profound sorrow, to my 
 native country, because I did not wish the American people to 
 think for a moment, that it is Hungary, the beautiful land on the 
 banks of the Danube and the Tisza, or the Hungarian people, a 
 noble, progressive race — the Yankees of Continental Europe, as 
 the late Moses P. Handy called them — who are at fault. 
 
 Having said this, I submit my work to the perusal of the 
 reader. 
 
 Marcus Braun. 
 
HUNGARY 
 
 " P atria cara, carior libertas; 
 Patriae infelici fidelis." 
 I love thee, my dear native country, hut dearer to me is true liberty; 
 unfortunate country of mine, I am faithful to thee. . . . 
 
 I HE eyes of all nations are fixed upon Hungary. The 
 (event of the existing crisis will be decisive, in the 
 [opinion of mankind, of the practicability of the system of 
 government demanded, fought for now by a " passive resistance." 
 — who knows whether or not later on by force, revolution? — 
 by the descendants of Arpad, the idolizing admirers of Louis Kos- 
 suth, the singers of the songs of Petofi. 
 
 It is only yesterday that Hungary exhibited to all of the civi- 
 lized world the glorious splendor of her life of one thousand years. 
 
 It was a marvelously sublime picture. All the world recog- 
 nized the justice of the proud claim of the Magyars : " Extra 
 Hungariam non est vita, si est vita, non est ita." 
 
 Where there is life there is death, where there is hope there ii 
 despair, where there is light there is shadow. 
 
 This axiomatic observation obtains also in the life of nations 
 and in the history of peoples. 
 
 I shall speak first of the life, the hope and the light of Magyar 
 history, politics, commerce, industry, art, literature, institutions, 
 and then, " not because I love Caesar less, but Rome more," I shall 
 show the nation's shadow, despair, death. 
 
 S 
 
6 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Of course it is not yet all over. Thank God ! " fel magyar, 
 all Buda meg." ^ If my calm, unbiased, strictly just and objective 
 statement reminds my former countrymen of their sacred duty to 
 the fatherland, arouses in them the true love of liberty protected 
 by law, opens their eyes to existing evils which they will eradicate 
 by root and stem, if true to their national spirit of independence 
 they emancipate themselves from the power of plutocracy, if they 
 clean the nation's Augean stable of political and financial corrup- 
 tion, if they exile into political oblivion the political adventurers, 
 be they minister presidents, ministers, Foispans,'' members of par- 
 liament or but petty office-holders ; then all is well, then the nation 
 will live, and I, the humble voluntary exile, who of my own free 
 will and choice became an American citizen, will feel that I have 
 repaid to my dear native land the debt of gratitude and devotion I 
 ever owed her, then I shall feel richly rewarded for my labor of 
 love. 
 
 II 
 
 Let there be no misunderstanding. I love my beautiful native 
 country with all the love a son ever bore his mother. 
 
 I am proud to have descended from the countrymen of Arpad, 
 Hunyady and Zrinyi. I am unspeakably proud to know that every 
 pulse of civil liberty beats warm and full in the bosom of the 
 Magyar people. I am proud to be the most enthusiastic panegyrist 
 of the beautiful land on the banks of the Danube and Tisza, ex- 
 tending from beneath the shades of the Tatra to the shore of the 
 Adriatic sea. 
 
 My enthusiasm of things great, beautiful and glorious which 
 I have seen in my travels throughout the world, is not a bit greater 
 than my enthusiasm for the beauties of Hungary. In reading the 
 
 ^ " The Magyar lives ! Buda still stands ! " 
 
 'An office very nearly corresponding to our governors of our re- 
 spective States, in Hungary appointed by the King for the " counties." 
 
Immigration Abuses 7 
 
 beauties of Schiller and Goethe, of Shakespeare and Milton, of 
 Dante and Petrarca, of Moliere and Hugo, I am not so ungrateful 
 as to forget and I follow with heartfelt emotion the nearer and 
 dearer footsteps of Vorosmarty, Arany, Jokai and Petofi. When 
 I hear Greece cry to us and Rome plead with us, — voices from 
 the tombs of departed ages, — I think of our own Attila and Ar- 
 pad and their efforts and struggles and victories. In my mind 
 Bunker Hill and Mohacs are coupled together by an association 
 of ideas, immortal Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of the slave 
 is to me but the continuation of the act of Louis Kossuth 
 abolishing the factitious order of nobility and his exalted soul 
 pouring the ichor of the gods through millions of peasant hearts, 
 making them truly noble. 
 
 The reader of these pages is earnestly implored to behold in 
 me a man who submits his honest views and observations to his 
 consideration only because he religiously believes that free discus- 
 sion ever has been and still is, as it ever will be, odious to licentious 
 power, that free discussion and liberty are contemporaneous fires, 
 that honest criticism is not wanton condemnation ; that the putting 
 of a finger upon the ulcerous spot may hurt and make the patient 
 cry out in agony, but it shows the very point where the dissecting 
 knife must cut deep. 
 
 Pride, vanity, egotism, offensive in private life, are vices 
 which partake of the character of crimes, in the conduct of public 
 affairs. Corruption is the sorest ulcer on the body politic. The 
 high, the exalted, the sublime emotions of a patriotism, which 
 soaring toward heaven, rises far above all mean, low or selfish 
 things and is absorbed by one sole transporting thought of the 
 good and the glory of one's country, are never felt in the Magyar 
 politician's — the modern Magyar statesman's impenetrable 
 bosom. 
 
 That patriotism which, catching the inspirations from the 
 immortal God, and leaving at an immeasurable distance below all 
 lesser, grovelling, personal interests and feelings, animates and 
 
8 Immigration Abuses 
 
 prompts to deeds of self-sacrifice, of valor, of devotion, of death 
 itself, that patriotism which inspired the souls of Szechenyi and 
 Klauzal and Deak that is unknown in the school of patriotism 
 founded by the Tiszas, the Fejervarys, the Kristoffys. And it is 
 this latter school of patriotism which holds sway over the public 
 morals of my poor fatherland of old. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is true, the geographical outlines of Hungary seem to have 
 been laid down by nature. However, it is not Nature, but it was 
 the genius of the people, of the nation, of the race, that formed 
 the " land of the free, and the home of the brave " of the Euro- 
 pean continent. The land, — the bulk and body of the Magyar 
 kingdom was shrouded into darkness even when the dawn of 
 civilization was breaking over other parts and portions of Europe, 
 and even over certain sections of the present Magyarland. The 
 creation and formation of a secure foundation of the Kingdom of 
 Hungary was a labor of centuries. 
 
 In the most remote epochs already, — we now know, — some 
 parts of Hungary were in the possession of the Celts and other 
 parts in that of the Thracians. The Celts and the Thracians were 
 swallowed up by the hordes of the great Roman Empire, who 
 again, in their turn were annihilated, swallowed up and assimi- 
 lated by the Huns, led by Attila, who held all Europe in the hollow 
 of his hand. 
 
 Hungary of to-day became the highway of the migrating 
 peoples. Huns, Eastern Goths, Longobards and Avares came, 
 but none left more than archaeological traces of their one-time 
 rule and reign. 
 
 In the last decade of the ninth century came the Magyars. 
 Their origin is somewhere below the Ural Mountains ; they were 
 a truly noble, heroic race. 
 
Immigration Abuses g 
 
 During the years 889 to 896 they had taken possession of the 
 land. Arpad was their leader; he is celebrated in song and in 
 story as the founder of the nation. Arpad, Zoltan, Taksony, Geza 
 Ond, Kond, and Tohotom were the " leaders " (in Hungarian, 
 fejedelem princes) who conquered the main territory of the pres- 
 ent kingdom; and finally in 997 Stephen (canonized, and known 
 as Saint Stephen) became the first king of Hungary. 
 
 These few printed lines cannot, of course, tell of the mighty 
 struggle to make of the Asiatic hordes a Christian community, but 
 it was indeed a glorious struggle, giving evidence of the adapta- 
 bility, the power, the might and the grandeur of the race. Of the 
 direct successors of St. Stephen, let there only be mentioned Bela 
 I. Geza I, St. Ladislas, and Coloman the Book-man, the latter 
 so called for his great erudition, the foremost savant king of his 
 epoch (1095-1114) in all the world, famous for his liberal penal 
 laws, abolishing trials by ordeal, inhibiting the prosecution of 
 witches etcetera. 
 
 The glory of these kings and of the Magyar nation cannot 
 be pointed out here, but by certain distinct historical occurrences, 
 and I refer to the history of the Crusades all who wish to know 
 more of the heroic role Magyarland then played in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 With Andrew HI. (1301), the male branch of the Arpad 
 family of kings died out. The right to choose her own king fell 
 back into the arms of the nation, and finally Charles Robert of 
 the Anjou family of Naples was chosen. Of his descendants his- 
 tory has but few more brilliant names than that of Louis the Great 
 (1342-1382). 
 
 Then came the epoch of the Hunyadys (1439-1490), with 
 Matthias as the giant figure, one of the greatest of the great. 
 Years, decades and centuries of heroic struggle in Hungary, by 
 Hungarians, to save Europe for Christian civilization against the 
 Turkish Hordes, ought to be spoken of now, but again the student 
 is referred to the perusal of truly historical works. 
 
lo Immigration Abuses 
 
 1490-1526 were the years of national decline, the nation suf- 
 fering from oligarchic outrages. 
 
 In 1526 was fought the disastrous battle of Mohacs, which 
 rent asunder the then almost 600 years old entity of Hungary and 
 brought the nation near to the grave of her very historical ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Two kings, John Szapolyai and Ferdinand I, both claiming 
 to be legally elected, were the rivals, clamoring for recognition by 
 Hungary; a period (1526-1604) dangerous to the very life of the 
 nation had broken upon the poor land, even then already almost in 
 the very throes of death. During all of these struggles of the 
 rival kings, accompanied by the natural consequences of civil wars, 
 the Turks made their power felt and conquered a great part of the 
 land, including Buda, the ancient fort and the capital of the king- 
 dom. It was only almost 150 years later, in 1686, that Hungary 
 freed herself of the Turkish yoke. 
 
 Hungarians have often been charged that, in their chauvinism 
 and enthusiasm, they like to speak and to write about themselves 
 in superlatives ; but the writer hereof dares to say it without fear 
 of successful contradiction of there being no nation on earth whose 
 history gives such glorious examples of true heroism as is recorded 
 in the pages of the story of Hungary. What a grateful task it 
 would be to speak here of Stephen Dobo, of George Szondi, of 
 Nickolas Zrinyi, of the Bathorys, the Bocskays, the Gabriel Beth- 
 lens, the George Rakoczys, the Nickolas Esterhazys, the For- 
 gachs, the Pazmanys, the Nickolas Palffys, but it is not history 
 that I am writing. I only want to proclaim here again, what all 
 the world knows, that the Magyar people are great in council and 
 are equally great in war, just as the leaders of the nation are great 
 to-day in the nefarious practice of " graft " and corruption and 
 public plunder. 
 
Immigration Abuses ii 
 
 IV 
 
 Then came the Habsbluurg house to the throne of St. Stephen. 
 
 The past of Hungary has been a history of the nation's 
 battles for independence, for religion, for freedom against foreign 
 potentates; but under the House of Habsbourgs only occurred 
 their continual struggles for the support of the ancient constitu- 
 tion, to which these kings had so often sworn. Meanwhile, all 
 the contests in which the nation had been engaged with the sires 
 of Ferdinand V. and Francis Joseph I., against the illegal and 
 dastardly measures taken for the introduction and the maintenance 
 of absolutism into Hungary, but tended to secure the constitution 
 and the true and untrammeled liberties of the land. 
 
 If my pen would be graphic enough and my language suffi- 
 ciently expressive, to recount all the wounds which the Habsbourg 
 dynasty struck in the heart of the Magyars during their reign of 
 more than three hundred and fifty years, I would do so, but it has 
 been done by historians and students of politics, and I only will 
 attempt to press into a nutshell the story of the nation and of the 
 nation's struggle which could cause a people's loyalty — the " mo- 
 riamur pro rege nostro " — to die away and bring into the bosoms 
 of the people of Hungary detestation and hatred. 
 
 Let there be no mistake about it, the loyalty to the throne is 
 a thing of the past. To the person of the hoary-headed monarch, 
 bent down by care and sorrow, hard hit by fate, wounded at heart 
 by broken family ties and broken in a manner which defies the 
 imagination of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare in building up a 
 heartrending and a soul-stirring tragedy, to him, I say, there is still 
 felt a certain degree of sympathy and of loyalty, but to the throne 
 — " none so poor to do him reverence." 
 
 Who can lift the veil of the morrow? When the aged king 
 will have been gathered in by the Angel of Death, and with ghoul- 
 ish glee there will resound throughout Europe the " Finis Austria " 
 and the War Lord on the banks of the prosaic Spree, and the 
 
12 Immigration Abuses 
 
 namesake and grandchild of the Unificator of Italy on the banks 
 of the classic Tiber will claim and demand what they think are 
 theirs, and the Slavic peoples of the heterogeneous monarchy will 
 think they are nearest to the realization of their dream of a 
 great Slavic world power, then, oh ! then, what will be thy fate, 
 poor Magyarland ? 
 
 The solution of this question would, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, be of almost no difficulty. The spirit of human liberty 
 and of free, parliamentary government nurtured throughout a 
 thousand years, would assert itself, manifest itself in a manner 
 that would secure the historic existence of the country. But, ah ! 
 there's the rub ! — That love of freedom, that chivalrous heroism, 
 that attachment to ancient rights and liberties, that noble self-sacri- 
 fice has been affected by the bacilli and bacterii of ordinary graft, 
 by dishonesty in public life and public office, and their pernicious 
 influence has been doing its undermining, corrupting, ulcerizing 
 work. What will be thy fate, my poor Magyarland? 
 
 Let me continue my bird's-eye view of historical events. Fer- 
 dinand I. became the sole king in 1540, his son Maximilian in 
 1564 and Rudolph in 1567. Turkish and religious wars and civil 
 strifes were the order of the day; no, not of the day, but of the 
 years, the century. Bitter was the fight between Magyar and 
 Turk and between Catholicism and Protestantism. The last named 
 king was especially the one who by his diffidence and indifference, 
 his want of patriotism, his antipathy against all that was truly 
 Magyar, by his bigotry and his pet pastime of dabbling in al- 
 chemy and astrology, his want of courage and manhood and 
 his intellectual weakness, allowed a condition of affairs to arise 
 which caused it to be but too true that " there was something 
 rotten in the state of Hungary." In addition to these shortcom- 
 ings of mind and heart, he, Rudolph I, was otherwise dangerous 
 to the nation, and it was only the loyal patriotism of Bocskay 
 which prevented his forfeiting land and crown. 
 
 Matthias II. followed Rudolph I. The period of their reign 
 
Immigration Abuses 13 
 
 and that of their successors was made momentous for Hungary 
 by th counter-reformation led by Cardinals Forgach and Peter 
 Pazmany, the heroic deeds of George Rakoczi I., and especially 
 by the sublimely great patriotic services of Nickolas Zrinyi, a 
 grandson of the famous defender of Szigetvar of the same name, 
 and was made infamous by the sins of commission and omission 
 of the kings, too numerous to be enumerated, among which, how- 
 ever, the sending to the stake of Magyar leaders like Peter Zrinyi, 
 Francis Nadasdy and Francis Frangepan, the organization of an 
 autocratic government at Pozsony, and the sending — by the score 
 — of Magyar Protestant preachers as galley slaves to Naples, 
 must be mentioned. 
 
 The reigns of Ferdinand II. (1619-1637) and of Ferdinand 
 III. (1636-1657) were famous for the "30 years religious war," 
 too well known to be here more minutely described. 
 
 It might be justly said that the reign of Leopold I. was one 
 of almost absolute autocracy, at least until 1681, although the 
 year 1662 had seen the gathering of a Magyar parliament. Civil 
 wars, religious wars, conspiracies, revolutions, rebellions, pillage 
 and murder were the events of his reign. True, it was in his 
 days and that of Joseph I, Leopold's son, that the Turkish yoke 
 was shaken off and all of Hungary freed of the Ozman's hordes. 
 The Turks made repeated efforts and attempts again to gain a 
 foothold on Hungarian soil, but all of them proved abortive. 
 
 In 1707 the Hungarian parliament assembled at Onod, de- 
 clared the throne to be vacant and the House of Habsbourg to 
 have forfeited all of its rights and claims to the Magyar Kingdom. 
 Again civil war was the result, and Francis Rakoczy II. became 
 the powerful leader of the party that had dethroned the king. 
 Charles III. (as Emperor Charles V.) (1711-1740) became Magyar 
 king, and it is with him that Hungary entered into, the first time, 
 an iron-clad compact with the House of Habsb\urg. The agree- 
 ment is known as the " Pragmatic Sanction," a misnomer, though 
 by that name it is always cited. The contract — some years be- 
 
14 Immigration Abuses 
 
 fore already adopted by all Austrian provinces — provided that, 
 in case the reigning house shall not have any male heirs, the 
 crown shall descend to the female branch of the family, first to the 
 daughters of Charles, then to those of Joseph, and finally to those 
 of Leopold and their descendants. Over and above, however, the 
 contract provided for the recognition and the maintenance of the 
 independence of Hungary forever. It was the declaration of a 
 great principle, unfortunately, however, only " a theory," which 
 was the cause of the many constitutional fights of which Magyar- 
 land was the scene, the most historic being the revolution of 1848 
 and the " Ausgleich of 1867." 
 
 Ah ! that Ausgleich ! Immortal Francis Deak, the " noblest 
 Roman of them all," you never dreamed that from your gigantic 
 work, petty pot-house politicians, theTiszas and the Kristof fys will 
 create a condition of affairs such as obtain to-day. But patience, 
 that's another story, says Rudyard Kipling. I'll tell it when I 
 come to it. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Hungarian Nation had soon the opportunity to come to 
 the defence of the " Pragmatic Sanction." 
 
 The daughter of Charles, Maria Theresa, was being attacked 
 by her neighboring kings, who made the bold attempt to divide 
 her Empire-Kingdom among themselves. The Magyar Parlia- 
 ment exclaimed its famous " Moriamur pro rege nostro " (not 
 regina, but rege) and with but an insignificant loss of a part of 
 Silesia she came out of the great wars. 
 
 In justice to the great Queen-King let it be admitted here, 
 that she did a great deal for the intellectual and industrial de- 
 velopment of the Kingdom, although she introduced a system of 
 duties and taxes, which made Hungary to be — in truth — but 
 a colony of Austria and retarded the material welfare and progress 
 of the country to a most dangerous degree. 
 
Immigration Abuses 15 
 
 Her son, Joseph II, one of the most enlightened monarchs 
 of Europe, was but " de facto " King of Hungary. " De jure " 
 he was never king. He made most pernicious attempts to ger- 
 manize the nation and to undermine the true national Magyar 
 spirit and traditions, even to suppress the native language. To 
 his credit it must be said, however, that before his death — as a 
 matter of death-bed repentance — he himself annihilated his work 
 in these directions. 
 
 His successor, Leopold II. (1790-1802), made peace with the 
 nation, and in 1790 he gave his royal sanction to parliamentary 
 laws recognizing and securing the independence of Hungary. He 
 was followed by Francis I. (1802-1835), whose reign began dur- 
 ing the days of the Napoleonic wars. 
 
 Francis was a genuine Habsb^urg. During the French wars, 
 while his throne and his very life depended on Magyar loyalty 
 and Magyar bravery, he was the Apostolic King, true fo his oath 
 taken at his coronation. When the " Holy Alliance " had crushed 
 the little Napoleon, he had forgotten everything, even the sanctity 
 of his solemn oath. Napoleon's proclamation (1809) to Hungary : 
 " establish your territorial independence, elect a king of your 
 own " found no echo in the hearts of the Magyars ; they remained 
 faithful to the throne. When, however. Napoleon had been safely 
 chained to the rocks of the island St. Helena, Francis nevermore 
 called the Magyar Parliament into session, issued royal rescripts 
 and ruled by brutal force. 
 
 The spirit of the Magyars, however, had been aroused. The 
 Asiatic chiefs had become Europeanized, culture and education 
 had made marvelous strides, the Magyar nobility saw that to 
 secure the nation's true independence they must cease to be feudal 
 Idrds and must become law-abiding citizens. Against his will, 
 Francis was forced to convene the Magyar Parliament (1825) 
 and that year found the nation ready for the great state and 
 political reforms that were to come. 
 
 Great epochs create great geniuses, and in these years ap- 
 
1 6 Immigration Abuses 
 
 peared upon the political horizon of Magyarland the great Count 
 Stephen Szechenyi, whose life's motto : " Magyarorszag nem volt 
 hanem lesz " — "Hungary has not been — Hungary will be," 
 characterized him most excellently. He founded the Hungarian 
 Academy of Sciences, giving it, as a foundation, the year's income 
 of his estate, 60,000 florins. Stephen Szechenyi ! What a differ- 
 ence between the giant who threw the Promethean spark into the 
 life of the nation which grew into a mighty flame, and the small- 
 fry of to-day ! What a difference between him, in whose name 
 is interwoven with the making the Danube and the Tisza navi- 
 gable, who established commerce and industry, who opened the 
 " iron gate," built the Budapest Suspension Bridge, introduced 
 railroads, purified the language, popularized Magyar literature, 
 made of Hungary a modern state, what a difference, I say, be- 
 tween him and the vainglorious, selfish leaders of to-day who 
 grow fat while feeding at the crib of the nation! 
 
 At about the same time came into public life another great 
 Magyar leader, immortal Louis Kossuth, the great Chieftain of 
 liberty. Hats off! Of him and his work I must speak in a 
 separate chapter. 
 
 vn 
 
 Louis Kossuth 
 
 Greek mythology records the heartrending fable of Pro- 
 metheus, who refused to recognize the demi-gods at whose shrine 
 the unthinking mass worshipped ; he reached upward and brought 
 from heaven the holy fire with which he began to imbue with life 
 a being of his own creation. 
 
 Of course, the demi-gods were panic-stricken. They feared 
 the loss of their power, seized Prometheus and chained him to the 
 rock; there to suffer alive the terrible agonies of death, to be 
 devoured by the birds of prey and yet not able to die. 
 
Immigration Abuses 17 
 
 Decidedly alike to the fate of the hero ,of this fable has been 
 the fate of the man whose mighty intellect, intense patriotism, 
 heroic soul, burning eloquence, passionate love of truth and justice 
 and of right and of liberty, had changed Hungary from a feudal 
 state of the medieval ages into a modern state wherein liberty 
 protected by law, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, free- 
 dom of press and religious freedom reign supreme, at least once in 
 a while. 
 
 Be it Sophocles or Milton or Shakespeare or Dante or Tasso 
 or Hugo or Goethe, no poetical genius of the world has ever 
 conceived a more tragic figure than that of Louis Kossuth. 
 
 Louis Kossuth is, indeed, the Prometheus of modern history. 
 
 Engraved is his immortal name into the tablets of the world's 
 history as one of the greatest of the great, to be loved by the 
 Magyars as long as there will live an Irishman who honors the 
 name of O'Connell or an American who will love to hear the name 
 of George Washington. 
 
 Shall I give here his life's history? No. All the world 
 knows it. All the world knows how the demi-gods of Austria 
 and Russia, the Czar and the Kaiser, had him chained to the rock 
 of homelessness, and the birds of prey — the bitter woe and the 
 terrible sorrow for his native land — gnawed him, suffering alive 
 the awful agonies of death — because he had lived for, fought 
 for Hungary's ancient constitution which a perjured Habsbourg 
 King, Ferdinand V, of cursed fame, had attempted to destroy. 
 
 Stupendous, sublimely great was his life's work, a work into 
 which he brought brain and heart; the one clear and great, the 
 other pure and noble, brain and heart such as the Magyar states- 
 men of to-day have not. 
 
 Old Hungary was dragging slowly along in the days of Kos- 
 suth's birth on September 12th, 1802, suffering from the baneful 
 influences of the reign of Joseph IL 
 
 Under these influences the nation's life slowly, but surely, 
 ebbed into loss of nationality, loss of national pride, loss of national 
 
i8 Immigration Abuses 
 
 honor, and Hungary was in danger of degenerating into an Aus- 
 trian province. 
 
 Rapacious Napoleon had arisen meteor-like in France and 
 had lured, by the deceitful blaze of glory, the nation to fierce 
 wars and still more fierce revolutions, wading and bathing and 
 laving in blood, the blood of nerves, the blood of traitors and the 
 blood of — fools. 
 
 The mighty genius of Pitt and Fox, which had shaken the 
 British Senate, had just fallen in England, and the strong arm 
 of Wellington threw thunderbolts on every shore. 
 
 Here, in the United States, then only a venture, the trial of 
 a government by the people and for the people, was just be- 
 ginning to show its inherent force and to become a realization 
 of the sturdy set of men who came here on the Mayflower. 
 
 Evil for Hungary, evil for all Europe were the years of the 
 first decades of the 19th century. When Kossuth was bom the 
 world-delivering liberty for which he lived, for which he fought, 
 was but the dream of the few. 
 
 One of the leading educational institutions of the nation, 
 the Evangelical Lyceum at Sarospatak received him as its scholar, 
 and there it was that Kossuth became imbued with that strong 
 religious spirit and with that sublime faith, which characterized 
 him all through life and evidences of which are so profusely 
 scattered throughout all of his speeches. 
 
 During the meeting of the Magyar Parliament at Pozsony in 
 1832 he appeared as, what we call here in the United States, a 
 lay delegate. That is to say, according to the organization of the 
 parliament, certain landed proprietors and magnates had the right 
 to send an appointee of their own, a kind of a " lobby " — " side- 
 walk delegates " — who had no right to vote, etc., whose pres- 
 ence, however, was a great power, and whose influence was felt. 
 
 Of these years of his " parliamentary work," (?) there is the 
 living evidence of his " Parliamentary Reports," the first Magyar 
 newspaper, which again, however, only kindest partiality can call 
 
Immigration Abuses 19 
 
 a newspaper, for it was written by hand, copied by copyist and 
 later on multiplied from stone. But let the truth be told, not a 
 newspaper in the United States, of to-day, exerts such influence 
 here, as that hand-written, irregularly appearing newspaper sheet 
 did in Hungary. 
 
 Returning from the sessions of Parliament to Budapest (then 
 Pest) he changed his newspaper into the " Legislative Reports," 
 advocating therein internal reforms of a magnitude that can only 
 be grasped when it is pointed out that their aims were to cause 
 Magyarland to break with her policy then nearly a thousand years 
 old, to cast off feudalism, to induce the nobility freely to forego 
 their ancient rights and privileges, to become from an Asiatic 
 people a Modern Nation, to abolish the ancient system of rents 
 and tithes, to abandon the old official language, the Latin and 
 to adopt for Legislature and Parliament the Magyar tongue, to 
 recognize the rights of the individual, to give the right of suffrage, 
 to have true freedom of conscience, of thought, of speech and 
 of press ; to build canals and highways, to establish home industry 
 and a thousand other reforpis. 
 
 Embittered by his bold demands, the Habsbl}urg government 
 sent him on a charge of treason to prison, where for two years 
 he remained, a victim of Austrian political blindness and stupidity. 
 These two years he spent with but two books that were given him 
 by his not too generous jailer; one King James' Bible and the 
 other Shakespeare's works — English, of course — given to him 
 in response to his right to demand for " books," his jailer thinking 
 it a good joke to give him books in a language which the young 
 political prisoner did not understand. 
 
 Rejoice, genius of the English language, for this dastardly 
 trick of the narrow-minded jailer ! It made Kossuth an English 
 scholar. How he mastered the language in which the Declaration 
 of Independence was written! 
 
 Of all the great orators of all the world he was the peer! 
 The memory of Cicero and Demosthenes, of Mirabeau and of 
 
20 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Grattan, of O'Connell, of Chatham, of Pitt, of Fox, of Adams, 
 of Patrick Henry, of William Wirt, of James Otis, of Daniel 
 Webster and of Henry Clay, of Castelar and of Gambetta, of 
 Blaine and of Conkling comes to my mind when speaking of 
 Kossuth's eloquence. 
 
 Of all these he was superior as an orator. They pleaded 
 in their mother tongue for and in behalf of the cause they ad- 
 vocated in their oratory. In all the world's history there is but 
 one Kossuth, who spoke in a language that was not his own, that 
 he had learned when in manhood's years, yet who spoke English 
 so magnificently well, that his speeches, delivered here in the 
 United States, were a revelation to his listeners, showing what 
 magic charm there is in words, if the beauty of expression is on 
 par with the sublimity of thoughts expressed and whose 
 
 " Words had such a melting flow, 
 And spoke of truth so sweetly well, 
 They dropped like heaven's serenest snow 
 And all was brightness where they fell." 
 
 Soon after his delivery from prison — a general amnesty 
 freed him — he became editor of the " Pesti Hirlap," which was a 
 genuine newspaper, printed in cold type, but his mighty appeals to 
 the nation to awake from the sleep of many centuries, to throw 
 off the shackles of lethargy and indifference and submission, to 
 assert its manhood and political power, warmed the hearts of the 
 nation and filled it with a passionate fire for the love of liberty. 
 
 Engaged in thus educating his people to be politically ripe 
 came the year 1848. All Europe was in turmoil. France, Italy, 
 Germany, Austria-Hungary stood under the flag of the revolution 
 
 Vain and abortive must prove my effort to speak here of that 
 Magyar revolution of 1848-1849, for I am but a very poor writer. 
 I can only grow enthusiastic when I think of the valor, the cour- 
 age, the heroism of my countrymen. 
 
Immigration Abuses 21 
 
 Enraptured, I think of that great Magyar songster, Alex- 
 ander Petofi — who played in Magyar revolutionary literature the 
 role which Kossuth played in Magyar revolutionary politics — 
 who dwelleth in the hearts of a grateful nation, and whose soul, 
 on the bosom of immensity, has soared to the heights where the 
 Homers and Shakespeares, and the Dantes and the Goethes and 
 the Tennysons dwell. 
 
 Love and liberty were his immortal themes. The lightning 
 of his stormy soul poured out songs of patriotic fire, and millions 
 of people repeated after him : 
 
 "A Magyarok istenere eskiisziink, 
 Hogy rabok t6bbe nem ksziink ! " 
 
 " By the Magyar's God we truly swear, 
 The tyrant's yoke no more to bear ! " 
 
 The King of Hungary, Ferdinand V, bowed in submission 
 before the will of the people and recognized the Hungarian Con- 
 stitution. Louis Kossuth became Minister of Finance in the first 
 Hungarian Ministry. 
 
 Associated with him were Count Louis Batthyanyi as Prime 
 Minister; Bertalan Szemere, Home Affairs; Francis Deak, Jus- 
 tice; Lazar Meszaros, War; Gabor Klauzal, Trade; Count Ste- 
 phen Szechenyi, Public Works ; Baron Joseph Eotvos, Public In- 
 struction, and Prince Paul Eszterhazy, Minister around the per- 
 son of the King. 
 
 My God, my God! My blood boils with indignation and 
 shame to be forced to the confession that this Ministry, men of the 
 calibre of Kossuth, Szechenyi, Deak, a triumvirate of giant minds, 
 purest, noblest hearts, shall have as successors a Ministry of men 
 like Tisza, or Fejervary — pigmies, intellectual, moral dwarfs in 
 comparison to those great men of the year 1848. 
 
22 Immigration Abuses 
 
 VIII 
 
 Ferdinand V. was crowned at Pozsony in 1830, during the 
 life of his father. According to the fundamental principles of the 
 constitution, every king of Hungary could only be crowned when 
 he confirmed the rights of the nation before his coronation, and 
 at his coronation bound himself by an oath. Ferdinand did both. 
 He deliberately broke both, his royal confirmation and his royal 
 oath. 
 
 I shall prefer to give here in exact translation the Declaration 
 of Independence of Hungary adopted by the Magyar Parliament 
 in 1849 ^t Debreczen, it is a most interesting story of the perfidy 
 of Ferdinand V. and of Francis Joseph, then a boy in his teens, 
 and of the nobility, the heroism, the sublime qualities of heart 
 and mind of the Magyar people. 
 
 Declaration Relative to the Separation of Hungary 
 from Austria 
 
 We, the legally-constituted representatives of the Hungarian 
 nation assembled in Diet, do by these presents solemnly proclaim, 
 in maintenance of the inalienable natural rights of Hungary, with 
 all its dependencies, to occupy the position of an independent Eu- 
 ropean State — that the House of Habsb\urg-Lorraine, as per- 
 jured in the sight of God and man, has forfeited its right to the 
 Hungarian throne. At the same time, we feel ourselves bound 
 in duty to make known the motives and reasons which have im- 
 pelled us to this decision, that the civilized world may learn we 
 have taken this step not out of overweening confidence in our 
 wisdom, or out of revolutionary excitement, but that it is an act of 
 the last necessity, adopted to preserve from utter destruction a 
 nation persecuted to the limit of the most enduring patience. 
 
Immigration Abuses 23 
 
 Three hundred years have passed since the Hungarian nation, 
 by free election, placed the House of Austria upon its throne, in 
 accordance with stipulations made on both sides, and ratified by 
 treaty. These three hundred years have been, for the country, 
 a period of uninterrupted suffering. 
 
 The Creator has blessed this country with all the elements of 
 wealth and happiness. Its area of 100,000 square miles presents 
 in varied profusion innumerable sources of prosperity. Its popu- 
 lation, numbering nearly fifteen millions, feels the glow of youth- 
 ful strength within its veins, and has shown temper and docility 
 which warrant its proving at once the main organ of civilization 
 in Eastern Europe, and the guardian of that civilization when at- 
 tacked. Never was a more greatful task appointed to a reigning 
 dynasty by the dispensation of Providence than that which de- 
 volved upon the House of Habsb\urg-Lorraine. It would have 
 sufficed to do nothing that could impede the development of the 
 country. Had this been the rule observed, Hungary would now 
 rank among the most prosperous nations. It was only necessary 
 that it should not envy the Hungarians the moderate share of 
 constitutional liberty zvhich they timidly maintained during the 
 difficulties of a thousand years with rare fidelity to their sover- 
 eigns, and the House of Habsb\urg might long have counted this 
 nation among the most faithful adherents of the throne. 
 
 This dynasty, however, which can at no epoch point to a 
 ruler who based his power on the freedom of the people, adopted 
 a course toward this nation, from father to son, which deserves the 
 appellation perjury. 
 
 The House of Austria has publicly used every effort to de- 
 prive this country of its legitimate independence and constitution, 
 designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long 
 since deprived of all freedom, and to unite all in a common link 
 of slavery. Foiled in this effort by the untiring vigilance of the 
 nation, it directed its endeavor to lame the power, to check the 
 progress of Hungary, causing it to minister to the gain of the 
 
24 Immigration Abuses 
 
 provinces of Austria, but only to the extent which enabled those 
 provinces to bear the load of taxation with which the prodigality 
 of the imperial house weighed them down; having first deprived 
 those provinces of all constitutional means of remonstrating 
 against a policy which was not based upon the welfare of the 
 subject, but solely tended to maintain despotism and crush liberty 
 in every country of Europe. 
 
 It has frequently happened that the Hungarian nation, in 
 spite of this systematized tyranny, has been obliged to take up 
 arms in self-defense. Although constantly victorious in these 
 constitutional struggles, yet so moderate has the nation ever been 
 in its use of the victory, so strongly has it confided in the King's 
 plighted word that it has ever laid down arms as soon as the King 
 by new compacts and fresh oaths has guaranteed the duration of 
 its rights and liberties. But every nezv compact was futile as 
 those preceding it; each oath which fell from the royal lips was but 
 a renewal of previous perjuries. The policy of the House of 
 Austria, which aimed at destroying the independence of Hungary 
 as a state, has been pursued unaltered for three hundred years. 
 
 It was in vain that the Hungarian nation shed its blood for 
 the deliverance of Austria whenever it was in danger; vain were 
 all the sacrifices which it made to serve the interests of the reign- 
 ing house; it did it, on the renewal of the royal promises, forgot 
 the wounds which the past had inflicted; vain was the fidelity 
 cherished by the Hungarians for their king, and which, in mo- 
 ments of danger, assumed a character of devotion — they were 
 in vain, because the history of the government of that dynasty 
 in Hungary presents but an unbroken series of perjured deeds 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 In spite of such treatment, the Hungarian nation has all along 
 respected the tie by which it was united to this dynasty; and in 
 now decreeing its expulsion from the throne, it acts under the 
 natural law of self-preservation, being driven to pronounce this 
 sentence by the full conviction that the House of Habsb\urg-Lor- 
 
Immigration Abuses 25 
 
 raine is compassing the destruction of Hungary as an independent 
 state; so that this dynasty has been the first to tear the bonds 
 by which it was united to the Hungarian nation, and to confess 
 that it had torn them in the face of Europe. For many causes a 
 nation is justified, before God and man, in expelling a reigning 
 dynasty. Among such are the following: 
 
 When it forms alliances with the enemies of the country, with 
 robbers, or partisan chieftains, to oppress the nation; when it 
 attempts to annihilate the independence of the country, and its 
 constitution, sanctioned by oaths, attacking with an armed force 
 the people who have committed no act of revolt; when the in- 
 tegrity of the country which the sovereign has sworn to maintain 
 is violated, and its power diminished ; when foreign armies are 
 employed to murder the people, and to oppress their liberties. 
 
 Each of the grounds here enumerated would justify the exclu- 
 sion of a dynasty from the throne. But the House of Habsb^urg- 
 Loraine is unexampled in the compass of its perjuries, and has 
 committed every one of these crimes against the nation; and its 
 determination to extinguish the independence of Hungary has 
 been accompanied with a succession of criminal acts, comprising 
 robbery, destruction of property by fire, murder, maiming, and 
 personal ill-treatment of all kinds, besides setting the laws of the 
 country at defiance, so that humanity will shudder when reading 
 this disgraceful page of history. 
 
 The main impulse to this recent unjustifiable course was the 
 passing of the laws adopted in the spring of 1848 for the better 
 protection of the constitution of the country. These laws pro- 
 vided reform in the internal government of the country, by which, 
 the commutation of servile services and of the title were decreed; 
 a fair representation guaranteed to the people in the Diet, the con- 
 stitution of which was, before that, exclusively aristocratical ; 
 equality before the law proclaimed; the privilege of exemption 
 from taxation abolished; freedom of the press pronounced; and, 
 to stem the torrent of abuses, trial by jury established with other 
 
26 Immigration Abuses 
 
 improvements. Notwithstanding that troubles broke out in every 
 province of the Austrian Empire, as a consequence of the French 
 February Revolution, and the reigning dynasty was left without 
 support, the Hungarian nation was too generous at such a moment 
 to demand more privileges, and contented itself with enforcing 
 the administration of its old rights upon a system of ministerial 
 responsibility, and with maintaining them and the independence 
 of the country against the often renewed and perjured attempts 
 of the crown. These rights, arid the independence sought to be 
 maintained, were, however, no new acquisition, but were what 
 the King, by his oath, and according to law, was bound to keep 
 up, and which had not in the slightest degree been affected by the 
 relation in which Hungary stood to the provinces of the empire. 
 
 In point of fact, Hungary and Transylvania, with all their 
 possessions and dependencies, were never incorporated into the 
 Austrian Empire, but formed a separate independent kingdom, 
 even after the adoption of the Pragmatic Sanction by which the 
 same law of succession was adopted for Hungary which obtained 
 in the other countries and provinces. 
 
 The clearest proof of this legal fact is furnished by the law 
 incorporated into the act of the Pragmatic Sanction, and which 
 stipulates that the territory of Hungary and its dependencies, as 
 well as its independence, self-government, constitution, and priv- 
 ileges, shall remain inviolate and specially guaranteed. 
 
 Another proof is contained in the stipulation of the Prag- 
 matic Sanction, according to which the heir of the crown only be- 
 came legdUy king of Hungary upon the conclusion of a coronation 
 treaty with the nation and upon his sxvearing to maintain the con- 
 stitution of the laws of the country, whereupon he is to be crowned 
 with the crown of St. Stephen. The act signed at the coronation 
 contains the stipulation that all laws, privileges, and the entire con- 
 stitution, shall be observed, together with the order of succession. 
 Only one sovereign since the adoption of the Pragmatic Sanction 
 refused to enter into the coronation compact and swear to the 
 
Immigration Abuses 27 
 
 constitution. This was Joseph II., who died without being 
 crowned, but for that reason his name is not recorded amongst 
 the kings of Hungary, and all his acts are considered illegal, null 
 and void. His successor, Leopold II., was obliged, before ascend- 
 ing the Hungarian throne, to enter into the coronation compact, to 
 take the oath, and to let himself be crowned. On this occasion it 
 was distinctly declared in Art. 10, 1790, sanctioned upon oath by 
 the King, that Hungary was a free and independent country with 
 regard to its government, and not subordinate to any other state 
 or people whatever, consequently that it was to be governed by its 
 own customs and laws. 
 
 The same oath was taken by Francis I., who came to the 
 throne in the year 1792. On the extinction of the imperial dignity 
 in Germany, and the foundation of the Austrian Empire, this 
 emperor, who allowed himself to violate the law in innumerable 
 instances, had still sufficient respect for his oath, publicly to avow 
 that Hungary formed no portion of the Austrian Empire. For 
 this reason Hungary was separated from the rest of the Austrian 
 states, by a chain of custom guards along the whole frontier, 
 which still continues. 
 
 The sarnie oath was taken on his accession to the throne by 
 Ferdinand V., who at the Diet held at Pressburg last year, of his 
 own free will, sanctioned the laws that were passed, but who, 
 soon after, breaking that oath, entered into a conspiracy with the 
 other members of his family with the intent of erasing Hungary 
 from the list of independent nations. 
 
 Still the Hungarian nation preserved with useless piety its 
 loyalty to its perjured sovereign, and during March last year, 
 while the empire was on the brink of destruction, while its armies 
 in Italy suffered one defeat after another, and he in his Imperial 
 palace had to fear at any moment that he might be driven from 
 it; Hungary did not take advantage of so favorable a moment to 
 make increased demands; it only asked that its constitution might 
 be guaranteed and abuses rectified — a constitution to maintain 
 
28 Immigration Abuses 
 
 which fourteen kings of the Austrian dynasty had sworn a solemn 
 oath, and which every one of them had broken. 
 
 When the king undertook to guarantee those ancient rights 
 and gave his sanction to the establishment of a responsible min- 
 istry, the Hungarian nation flew enthusiastically to his support, 
 and rallied its might around his tottering throne. At that eventful 
 crisis, as at so many others, the house of Austria was saved by 
 the fidelity of Hungarians. 
 
 Scarcely, however, had this oath fallen from his lips, when 
 he conspired anew with his family, the accomplices of his crime, 
 to compass the destruction of the Hungarian nation. This con- 
 spiracy did not take place on the ground that any new privileges 
 were conceded by the recent laws which diminished the royal 
 authority. From what has been said, it is clear that no such de- 
 mands were made. The conspiracy was founded to get rid of the 
 responsible ministry, which made it impossible for the Vienna 
 cabinet to treat the Hungarian Constitution as a nullity. 
 
 In former times, a governing council under the name of the 
 Royal Hungarian Stadtholdership {Consilium Locum-tenentiale 
 Hungaricum) the president of which was the Palatine, held its 
 seat at Buda, whose sacred duty it was to watch over the in- 
 tegrity of the state, inviolability of the constitution, and the sanc- 
 tity of the laws; but this collegiate authority not presenting any 
 elements of personal responsibility, the Vienna cabinet gradually 
 degraded this council to the position of administrative organ of 
 court absolutism. In this manner, while Hungary had ostensibly 
 an independent government, the despotic Vienna cabinet disposed 
 at will of the money and blood of the people for foreign purposes, 
 postponing its trading interests to the success of court cabals, 
 injurious to the welfare of the people so that we were excluded 
 from all connection with the other countries of the world, and 
 were degraded to the position of a colony. The mode of govern- 
 ing by a ministry was intended to put a stop to these proceedings 
 ■which caused the rights of the country to moulder uselessly in 
 
Immigration Abuses 29 
 
 its parchments; by the change, these rights and the royal oath 
 were both to become a reality. It was the apprehension of this, 
 and especially the fear of losing its control over the money and 
 blood of the country, which caused the House of Austria to de- 
 termine to involve Hungary, by the foulest intrigues, in the hor- 
 rors of fire and slaughter, that, having plunged the country in a 
 civil war, it might seise the opportunity to dismember the lands, 
 and blot out the name of Hungary from the list of independent 
 nations, and unite its plundered and bleeding limbs with the 
 Austrian monarchy. 
 
 The beginning of this course was by issuing orders during 
 the existence of the ministry, directing an Austrian general to rise 
 in rebellion against the laws of the country, and by nominating 
 the same general Ban of Croatia, a kingdom belonging to the 
 kingdom of Hungary. Croatia and Slavonia were chosen as the 
 seat of military operations in this rebellion, because the military 
 organisation of a portion of those countries promised to present 
 the greatest number of disposable troops; it was also thought, 
 that since a portion of those countries had for centuries been 
 excluded from the enjoyment of constitutional rights, and sub- 
 jected to a military organization in the name of the emperor, they 
 would easily be induced to rise at his bidding. 
 
 Croatia and Slavonia were chosen to begin this rebellion, 
 because, in those countries, the inhuman policy of Prince Metter- 
 nich had, with a view to the weakening of all parties, for years, 
 cherished hatred against the Hungarian nation. By exciting, in 
 every possible manner the most unfounded national jealousies, 
 and by employing the most disgracefitl means, he had succeeded 
 in inflaming a party with rage, although the Hungarians, far 
 from desiring to oppress the Croatians, allowed the most unre- 
 strained development to the provincial institutions of Croatia, and 
 shared with their Croatian and Slavonian brethren their political 
 rights; even going the length of sacrificing some of their owm 
 rights by acknowledging special privileges and immunities in y 
 those dependencies. 
 
30 Immigration Abuses 
 
 The Ban revolted, therefore, in the name of the emperor, 
 and rebelled, openly, against the King of Hungary, who,' is, how- 
 ever, one and the same person; and he went so far as to decree 
 the separation of Croatia and Slavonia from Hungary, with 
 which they had been united for eight hundred years, as well as 
 to incorporate them with the Austrian Empire. Public opinion 
 and the undoubted facts threw the blame of these proceedings on 
 the Archduke, Francis Charles, and especially on the consort of 
 the last-named prince, the Archduchess Sophia; and since the 
 Ban in this act of rebellion openly alleged that he acted as a faith- 
 ful subject of the Emperor, the ministry of Hungary requested 
 their sovereign by a public declaration to wipe off the stigma 
 which these proceedings threw upon the family. At that moment 
 affairs were not prosperous for Austria in Italy; the Emperor, 
 therefore, did proclaim that the Ban and his associates were 
 guilty of high treason and of exciting to rebellion. But at the 
 same time that this edict was published, the Ban and his accom- 
 plices were covered with favors at Court and supplied for their 
 enterprise, with money, arms, and ammunition. The Hungarians 
 confiding in the royal proclamation, and not wishing to provoke 
 a civil conflict, did not hunt out those proscribed traitors in their 
 lair, and only adopted measures for checking any extension of 
 the rebellion. But soon afterwards, the inhabitants of the South 
 of Hungary, of Servian race, were excited to rebellion by precisely 
 the same means. 
 
 These were also declared by the King to be rebels, but were, 
 nevertheless, like the others, supplied with money, arms and 
 ammunition. The King's commissioned officers and civil ser- 
 vants enlisted bands of robbers, in the Principality of Servia, to 
 strengthen the rebels, and aid them in massacring the peaceable 
 Hungarian and German inhabitants of the Banat. The command 
 of these rebellious bodies were further intrusted to the rebel lead- 
 ers of the Croatians. 
 
 During this rebellion of the Hungarian Servians, scenes of 
 
Immigration Abuses 31 
 
 cruelty were witnessed at which the heart shudders. Whole 
 towns and villages, once flourishing, were laid waste; Hungarians, 
 fleeing before these murderers, were reduced to the condition of 
 vagrants and beggars in their own country; the most lovely dis- 
 tricts were converted into a wilderness. 
 
 Thus were the Hungarians driven to self-defence; but the 
 Austrian Cabinet had dispatched, some time previously, the 
 bravest portion of the national troops to Italy, to oppress the king- 
 doms of Lombardy and Venice; notzvithstanding that our country 
 tvas, at home, bleeding from a thousand wounds, still she had 
 allowed them to leave for the defence of Austria. The greater 
 part of the Hungarian regiments were, according to the old system 
 of government, scattered through the other provinces of the 
 empire. In Hungary itself, the troops quartered were mostly 
 Austrians, and they afforded more protection to the rebels than 
 to the laws, or to the internal peace of the country. The with- 
 drawal of these troops and the return of the national militia was 
 demanded of the Government, hut was either refused or its fulfill- 
 ment delayed; and when our brave comrades, on hearing the dis- 
 tress of their country, returned in masses, they were persecuted, 
 and such as were obliged to yield to superior force were disarmed 
 and sentenced to death, for having defended their country against 
 rebels. 
 
 The Hungarian ministry begged the King earnestly to issue 
 orders to all troops and commanders of fortresses in Hungary 
 enjoining fidelity to the constitution and obedience to the ministers 
 of Hungary. Such a proclamation was sent to the Palatine, Vice- 
 roy of Hungary, Archduke Stephen, at Buda. The necessary 
 letters were written and sent to the post-office. But this nephew 
 of the King, the Archduke Palatine, shamelessly caused these 
 letters to be smuggled back from the post-office, although they 
 had been countersigned by the responsible m.inisters and they were 
 afterwards found amongst his papers, when he treacherously 
 departed from the country. 
 
32 Immigration Abuses 
 
 The rebel Ban menaced the Hungarian coast with an attack, 
 and the Government, with the King's consent, ordered an armed 
 corps to march through Styria for the defence of Fiume; but this 
 whole force received orders to march into Italy. Yet such glar- 
 ing treachery was not disavowed by the Vienna Cabinet. 
 
 The rebel force occupied Fiume, and disunited it from the 
 kingdom of Hungary, and this irruption was disavowed by the 
 Vienna Cabinet as having been a misunderstanding ; the furnish- 
 ing of arms, ammunition, and money to the rebels of Croatic^ 
 was also declared to have been a misunderstanding. Instruc- 
 tions were issued to the effect that unless special orders were 
 given, the army and the commanders of fortresses were not to 
 follow the orders of the Hungarian ministers, but were to exe- 
 cute the orders of the Austrian Cabinet. 
 
 Finally, to reap the fruit of so much perfidy, the Emperor, 
 Francis Joseph, dared to call himself King of Hungary in the 
 manifesto of March pth, wherein he openly declared that he 
 erased the Hungarian nation from the list of independent nations 
 of Europe, and that he divided its territory into five parts, divid- 
 ing Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, and Fiume, from Hungary, 
 creating at the same time, a principality for the Servian rebels 
 {the Koirodina), and having paralysed the political existence 
 of the country, declared it incorporated into the Austrian 
 monarchy. 
 
 Never was so disgraceful a line of policy followed towards 
 a nation. Hungary, unprepared with money, arms and troops, 
 and not expecting to be called on to make resistance, was 
 entangled in a net of treachery, and was obliged to defend itself 
 against the threatened annihilation with the aid of volunteers, 
 national guards, and an undisciplined, unarmed levy " en masse," 
 aided by the few regular troops which remained in the country. 
 In open battles the Hungarians have, however, been successful, 
 but they could not rapidly enough put down the Servian rebels, 
 and those of the military frontier, who were led by officers 
 
Immigration Abuses 33 
 
 devoted to Austria, and were enabled to take refuge behind en- 
 trenched positions. 
 
 It was necessary to provide a new armed force. The King, 
 still pretending to yield to the undeniably lawful demands of the 
 nation, had summoned a new Diet for the 2d of July, 1848, and 
 had called upon the representatives of the nation to provide 
 soldiers and money for the suppression of the Servian and 
 Croatian rebellion, and the reestablishment of public peace. He 
 at the same time issued a solemn proclamation in his own name, 
 and in that of his family, condemning and denouncing the Croatian 
 and Servian rebellion. The necessary steps were taken by 
 the Diet. A levy of 200,000 men and a subsidy of 40,000,- 
 000 of florins were voted as the necessary force, and the bills 
 were laid before the King for the royal sanction. At the same 
 moment the Hungarians gave an unexampled proof of their 
 loyalty by inviting the King, who had fled to Innsbruck, to go 
 to Pest, and by his presence tranquillize the people, trusting to the 
 loyalty of the Hungarians, who had shown themselves at all 
 times the best support of the throne. 
 
 This request was proffered in vain, for Radelzky had, in 
 the meantime been victorious in Italy. The Houses of Habs- 
 b\urg-Lorraine, restored to confidence by that victory, thought 
 the time had come to take off the mask and to involve Hungary, 
 still bleeding from past wounds, in the horrors of a fresh war 
 of oppression. The King from that moment began to address 
 the man, whom he himself had branded as a rebel, as " dear and 
 loyal" (Lieber Getreuer) ; he praised him for having revolted, 
 and encouraged him to proceed in the path he had entered upon. 
 
 He expressed a like sympathy for the Servian rebels, whose 
 hands yet reeked from the massacres they had perpetrated. It 
 was under this command that the Ban of Croatia, after being pro- 
 claimed as a rebel, assembled an army, and announced his com- 
 mission from the King to carry fire and sword into Hungary, 
 upon which the Austrian troops stationed in th? country united 
 
34 Immigration Abuses 
 
 with him. The commanders of the fortresses, Esseg, Temesvdr, 
 and Karlsburg, and the commanders of the forces in the Banat 
 and in Transylvania, breaking their oath taken to the country, 
 treacherously surrendered their trusts; a Slovak clergyman with 
 the commission of colonel, who had fraternized at Vienna with, 
 the revolting Czechs, broke into Hungary, and the rebel Croat 
 leader advanced, with confidence, through an unprepared country, 
 to occupy its capital, expecting that the army in Hungary would 
 not oppose him. 
 
 Even then the Diet did not give up all confidence in the 
 power of the royal oath, and the King was once more requested 
 to order the rebels to quit the country. The answer given was 
 a reference to a manifesto of the Austrian Ministry, declaring it 
 to be their determination to deprive the Hungarian nation of the 
 independent management of their financial, commercial, and war 
 affairs. The King at the same time refused, his assent to the 
 laws submitted for approval respecting the troops and the subsidy 
 for covering the expenditure. 
 
 Upon this the Hungarian ministers resigned, but the names 
 submitted by the President of the Council at the demand of the 
 King were not approved of for successors. The Diet then, 
 bound by its duty to secure the interests of the country, voted the 
 supplies, and ordered the troops to be levied. The nation obeyed 
 the summons with readiness. 
 
 The representatives of the people then summoned the nephew 
 of the Emperor to join the camp, and, as Palatine, to lead the 
 troops against the rebels. He not only obeyed the summons, but 
 made public professions of his devotion to the cause. As soon, 
 however, as an engagement threatened, he fled secretly from the 
 camp and the country, like a coward traitor. Amongst his 
 papers a plan formed some time previously by him was found, 
 according to which Hungary was to be simultaneously attacked 
 on nine sides — from Styria, Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, 
 and Transylvania, 
 
Immigration Abuses 35 
 
 From a correspondence with the Minister of War, seized at 
 the same time, it was discovered that the commanding generals 
 in the military frontier and the Austrian provinces adjoining 
 Hungary had received orders to enter Hungary, and to support 
 the rebels with their united forces. 
 
 The attack from nine points at once recdly began. The most 
 painful aggression took place in Transylvania, for the traitorous 
 commander in that district did not content himself with the prac- 
 tices considered lawful in war by disciplined troops. He stirred 
 up the Wallachian peasants to take arms against their own con- 
 stitutional rights, and, aided by the rebellious Servian hordes, com- 
 menced a course of vandalism and extinction, sparing neither 
 women, children, nor aged men; murdering and torturing the 
 defenceless Hungarian inhabitants; burning the most flourishing 
 villages and towns, amongst which, Nagy-Enyed, the seat of 
 learning for Transylvania, was reduced to a heap of ruins. 
 
 But the Hungarian nation, although taken by surprise, un- 
 armed and unprepared, did not abandon its future prospects in 
 any agony of despair. 
 
 Measures were immediately taken to increase the small stand- 
 ing army by volunteers and the levy of the people. These troops, 
 supplying the want of experience by the enthusiasm arising from 
 the feeling that they had right on their side, defeated the Croatian 
 armies and drove them out of the country. 
 
 The defeated army fled towards Vienna. 
 
 One of their leaders appealed, after an unsuccessful fight, 
 to the generosity of the Hungarians for a truce, which he used 
 to escape by night and surreptitiously with his beaten troops; the 
 other corps of more than ten thousand men, were surrounded 
 and taken prisoners, from the general to the last private. 
 
 The defeated army fled in the direction of Vienna, where 
 the Emperor continued his demoralizing policy, and nominated 
 the beaten and flying rebel as plenipotentiary and substitute in 
 Hungary, suspending by this act the constitution and institutions 
 
36 Immigration Abuses 
 
 of. the country, all its authorities, courts of justice and tribunals, 
 laying the kingdom under martial law, and placing in the hand 
 and under the unlimited authority of a rebel, the honor, the prop- 
 erty, and the lives of the people — in the hand of a man, who, 
 with armed bands had braved the laws and attacked the constitu- 
 tion of the country. 
 
 But the House of Austria was not contented with this un- 
 justifiable violation of oaths taken by its head. 
 
 The rebellious Ban was placed under the protection of the 
 troops stationed near Vienna, and commanded by Prince 
 Windischgratz, These troops, after taking Vienna by storm, 
 were led by an Imperial Austrian to conquer Hungary. But the 
 Hungarian nation, persisting in its loyalty, sent an envoy to the 
 advancing enemy. This envoy, coming under a flag of truce, 
 was treated as a prisoner and thrown into prison. No heed was 
 paid to remonstrances and the demands of the Hungarian nation 
 for justice. The threat of the gallows was, on the contrary, 
 thundered against all who had taken arms in defence of a wretched 
 and oppressed country. But before the army had time to enter 
 Hungary, a family revolution in the tyrannical reigning House 
 was perpetrated at OlmUtz. Ferdinand V. was forced to resign 
 a throne which had been polluted with so much blood and perjury, 
 and the son of Francis Charles, who also abdicated his claim to 
 the inheritance to the youthful Archduke Francis Joseph, caused 
 himself to be proclaimed Emperor of Austria and King of 
 Hungary. But no one but the Hungarian nation can, by com- 
 pacts, dispose of the constitutional throne of Hungary. 
 
 At this critical moment the Hungarian nation demanded 
 nothing more than the maintenance of its laws and institutions, 
 and peace guaranteed by their integrity. Had the assent of the 
 nation to this change by the occupant of the throne been asked in 
 a legal manner, and had the young prince offered to take the cus- 
 tomary oath that he would preserve the constitution, the Hun- 
 garian nation would not have refused to elect him King, in ac- 
 
Immigration Abuses 37 
 
 cordance with the treaties extant, and to crown him with St. 
 Stephen's crown before he had dipped his hands in the blood of 
 the people. 
 
 He, however, refusing to perform an act so sacred in the 
 eyes of God and man, and in strange contrast to the innocence 
 natural to youthful breasts, decla/red in his first words his inten- 
 tion of conquering Hungary, which he dared to call a rebellious 
 country, although he himself had raised rebellion there, and of 
 depriving it of that independence which it had maintained for a 
 thousand years to incorporate it into the Austrian monarchy. 
 
 And he was but too well influenced to keep his word. He 
 ordered the army under Windischgratz to enter Hungary, 
 and, at the same time, directed several corps of troops to attack 
 the country from Galicia and Styria. Hungary resisted the pro- 
 jected invasion, but being unable to make head against so many 
 countries at once on account of the devastation carried on in 
 several parts of the interior by the excited rebels, and being thus 
 prevented from displaying its whole power of defence, the troops 
 were in the first instance, obliged to retire. To save the capital 
 from the horrors of a storm like that to which Prague and Vienna 
 had been mercilessly exposed, and not to place the fortune of a 
 nation — which deserved better — on the die of a pitched battle, 
 for which there had not been sufficient preparation, the capital 
 was abandoned, and the Diet and National Government removed 
 on January ist to Debreczen, trusting to the help of a just God, 
 and to the energies of the nation, to prevent the cause from being 
 lost, even when it should be seen that the capital was given up. 
 Thanks be to Heaven, the cause was not lost! 
 
 But even then an attempt was made to bring about a peace- 
 ful arrangement, and a delegation was sent to the generals of the 
 perjured dynasty. This house, in its blind self-confidence, re- 
 fused to enter into any negotiation, and dared to demand an un- 
 conditional submission from the nation. The delegation was fur- 
 ther detained, and one of their members, the former president of 
 
38 Immigration Abuses 
 
 the ministry, was even thrown into prison. The deserted capital 
 was occupied and was turned into a place of execution; part of 
 the prisoners of war were there consigned to the scaffold, another 
 part was thrown into dungeons, while the remainder was forced 
 to enter the ranks of the army in Italy. 
 
 The m,easure of the crimes of the Austrian House was, how- 
 ever, filled up when — after its defeat — it applied for help to 
 the Emperor of Russia; and, in spite of the remonstrances and 
 protestations of the Porte, and of the consuls of the European 
 powers at Bucharest, in defiance of international rights, and to the 
 endangering of the balance of power in Europe, caused the 
 Russian troops stationed in Wallachia to be led into Transylvania, 
 for the destruction of the Hungarian nation. 
 
 Three months ago we were driven back upon the Tisza; our 
 just arms have already recovered all Transylvania; Klausenburg, 
 Hermanstadt, and Cronstadt are taken; one portion of the troops 
 of Austria is driven into the Bukowina, another, together with 
 the Russian force sent to aid them, is totally defeated, and to the 
 last man obliged to evacuate Transylvania and to flee into Wal- 
 lachia. Northern Hungary is cleared of foes. 
 
 The Servian rebellion is further suppressed; the forts at St. 
 Tarn's and the Roman entrenchment have been taken by storm, 
 and the whole country between the Danube and the Tisza includ- 
 ing the county of Bacs, has been recovered for the nation. 
 
 The commander-in-chief of the perjured House of Austria 
 has been defeated in five consecutive battles, and has, with his 
 whole army, been driven back upon and even over the Danube. 
 
 Founding a line of conduct upon all these occurrences, and 
 confiding in the justice of an eternal God, we, in the face of the 
 civilized world, in reliance upon the natural rights of the Hun- 
 garian nation, and upon the power it has developed to maintain 
 them, further impelled by that sense of duty which urges every 
 nation to defend its existence, do hereby declare and proclaim 
 in the name of the nation legally represented by us the follow- 
 in z ■ — 
 
Immigration Abuses 39 
 
 1st. Hungary^ with Transylvania as legally united with it, 
 and its dependencies, are hereby declared to constitute a free, 
 independent, sovereig'h state. The territorial unity of this state 
 is declared to be inviolable, and its territory to be indivisible. 
 
 2nd. The House of Habsb^urg-Lorraine — having, by 
 treachery, perjury, and levying of war against the Hungarian 
 nation, as well as by its outrageous violation of all compacts, in 
 breaking up the integral territory of the kingdom, in the separa- 
 tion of Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, Fiume, and its districts 
 from Hungary — further by compassing the destruction of the 
 independence of the country by arms, and by calling in the dis- 
 ciplined army of a foreign power, for the purpose of annihiliating 
 its nationality, by violation both of the Pragmatic Sanction and 
 of treaties concluded between Austria and Hungary, on which 
 the alliance between the two countries depended — is, as treach- 
 erous and perjured, forever excluded from the throne of the 
 united states of Hungary and Transylvania, and all their posses- 
 sions and dependencies, and is hereby deprived of the style and 
 the title, as well as of the armorial bearings belonging to the crown 
 of Hungary, and declared to be banished forever from the united 
 countries and their dependencies and possessions. They are, 
 therefore, declared to be deposed, degraded, and banished for- 
 ever from the Hungarian territory. 
 
 The Hungarian nation, in the exercise of its rights and sov- 
 ereign will, being determined to assume the position of a free 
 and independent state amongst the nations of Europe, declares it 
 to be its intention to establish and maintain friendly and neigh- 
 borly relations with those states with which it was formerly 
 united under the same sovereign, as well as to contract alliances 
 with all other nations. 
 
 The form of government to be adopted for the future will be 
 fixed by the Diet. 
 
 But until this point shall be decided, on the basis of the 
 ancient principles zvhich have been recognized for ages, the 
 
4° Immigration Abuses 
 
 government of the united countries, their possessions and depend- 
 encies, shall be conducted on personal responsibility, and under 
 the obligation to render an account of all acts, by Louis Kossuth, 
 who has by acclamation, and with the unanimous approbation of 
 the Diet of the nation, been named Governing President {Guber- 
 nator), and the ministers whom he shall appoint. 
 
 And this resolution of ours we shall proclaim and make known 
 to all nations of the civilized world, with the conviction that the 
 Hungarian nation will be received by them amongst the free and 
 independent nations of the world, with the same friendship and 
 free acknowledgment of its rights which the Hungarians proffer 
 to other countries. 
 
 We also hereby proclaim and make known to all thu in- 
 habitants of the united states of Hungary and Transylvania, and 
 their dependencies, that all authorities, communes, towns, and 
 the civil officers both in the countries and cities, are completely 
 set free and released from all the obligations under which they 
 stood, by oath or otherwise, to the said House of Habsbourg- 
 Lorraine, and that any individual daring to contravene this de- 
 cree, and by word or deed in any way aid or abet any one violating 
 it, shall be treated and punished as guilty of high treason. And 
 by the publication of this decree, we hereby bind and oblige all 
 the inhabitants of these countries to obedience to the Government 
 now instituted formally, and endowed with all necessary legal 
 powers. 
 
 IX 
 
 Kossuth's Oratory 
 
 Let me return to the revolution and to Louis Kossuth. The 
 revolution was successful until Austria called iti the Russian 
 bear and he devoured our poor Fatherland. 
 
 The people of the United States know the history of the 
 
Immigration Abuses 41 
 
 dowriJall from the lips of Kossuth, who had come here as the 
 guest of the nation. 
 
 His oratory I have characterized. Americans like Edward 
 Everett, Daniel Webster, Horace Mann, R. Frothingham, 
 Horace Greeley, WiUiam Cullen Bryant, Charles A. Dana, 
 Senator Hoar, Senator Charles Sumner, Henry Ward Beecher 
 — not to make my list too lengthy, I stop — have paid their 
 respective tribute of admiration to his genius as a chieftain of 
 liberty and as an inspiring orator. 
 
 Let me give here in as good translation as I can make of it, 
 a part of his speech in Magyar, by him delivered at the time when 
 the nation was in the throes of agony : — 
 
 " Hear ! Patriots hear ! The eternal God does not manifest 
 himself in passing wonders but in everlasting laws. It is an 
 eternal law of God's that whosoever abandoneth himself will be. 
 of God forsaken. It is an eternal law that whosoever assisteth 
 himself, him will the Lord assist. 
 
 " It is a divine law that swearing falsely is by its results self- 
 chastised. It is a law of God's that he who sweareth to perjury 
 and injustice, prepareth his own shame and the triumph of the 
 righteous cause. 
 
 " In firm reliance upon these eternal laws — on these laws 
 of the universe — I aver that my prophecy will be fulfilled, and 
 I foretell that this invasion of Jellachich will work out Hungary's 
 liberation. 
 
 " In the name of that fatherland, betrayed so basely, I charge 
 you to believe my prophecy and it will be fulfilled. In what 
 consists Jellachich's power? In a material force, seemingly 
 mighty, of seventy thousand followers, but of which thirty thou- 
 sand are furnished by the regulations of the military frontier. 
 
 " But what is in the rear of that host? By what is it sup- 
 ported ? There is nothing to support it ! 
 
 " Where is the population that cheers it with unfeigned en- 
 thusiasm? There is none. 
 
42 Immigration Abuses 
 
 " Such a host may ravage our territories, but never sub- 
 due it. 
 
 " Batu-Chan deluged our country with his hundreds of thou- 
 sands. He devastated, but he could not conquer. 
 
 " Jellachich's host at worst will prove a locust-swarm, in- 
 cessantly lessening in its progress until destroyed. 
 
 " So far as he advances, so far will be diminished the number 
 of his followers, never destined to behold the Drave again. 
 
 " Let us — Hungarians — be resolved, and stones will suffice 
 to destroy our enemy. This done, it will be time to speak of what 
 further will befall. 
 
 " But every Hungarian would be unworthy the sun's light if 
 his first morning thought, and his last thought at eve, did not 
 recall the perjury and treason with which his very banishment 
 from the realms of the living has been plotted. 
 
 " Thus the Hungarian people have two duties to fulfill. 
 
 " The first, to rise in masses, and crush the foe invading her 
 paternal soil. 
 
 " The second, to remember ! 
 
 " If the Hungarian should neglect these duties, he will prove 
 himself dastardly and base. His name will be synonymous with 
 shame and wickedness. 
 
 " So base and dastardly as to have himself disgraced the 
 holy memory of his forefathers — so base, that even his Maker 
 shall repent having created him to dwell upon this earth — so 
 accursed that air shall refuse him its vivifying strength — that 
 the cornfield, rich in blessings, shall grow into a desert beneath 
 his hand — that the refreshing well-head shall dry up at his 
 approach! Then shall he wander homeless about the world, im- 
 ploring in vain from compassion the dry bread of charity. The 
 race of strangers for all alms will smite him on the face. Thus 
 will that stranger race, which seeks in his own land to degrade 
 him into the outcast, whom every ruffian with impunity may 
 slay like the stray dog — which seeks to sink him into the likeness 
 
Immigration Abuses 43 
 
 of that Indian Pariah, whom men pitilessly hound their dogs upon 
 in sport to worry. 
 
 " For the consolations of religion he shall sigh in vain. 
 
 " The craven spirit by which Creation has been polluted will 
 find no forgiveness in this world, no pardon in the next. 
 
 " The maid to whom his eyes are raised shall spurn him from 
 her door like a thing unclean ; his wife shall spit contemptuously 
 in his face ; his own child shall lisp its first word out in curses upon 
 its father. 
 
 " Terrible ! terrible ! but such the malediction," proceeds this 
 proclamation, " if the Hungarian race proves so cowardly as not 
 to disperse the Croatian and Servian invaders, as the wild wind 
 disperses the unbinded sheaves by the wayside. 
 
 " But no, this will never be; and, therefore, I say the free- 
 dom of Hungary will be achieved by this invasion of Jellachich. 
 Our duty is to triumph first, then to remember. 
 
 " To arms ! Every man to arms ; and let the women dig a 
 deep grave between Veszprem and Fejervar, in which to bury 
 either the name, fame, and nationality of Hungary, or our enemy. 
 
 " And either on this grave will rise a banner, on which shall 
 be inscribed, in record of our shame, ' Thus God chastiseth 
 cowardice ! ' or we will plant thereon the tree of freedom ever- 
 lastingly green, and from out whose foliage shall be heard the 
 voice of the Most High, saying as from the fiery bush to Moses, 
 ' The spot on which thou standest is holy ground.' 
 
 " All hail ! to Hungary, to her freedom, happiness and fame. 
 
 " He who has influence in a county, he who has credit in a 
 village, let him raise his banner. Let there be heard upon our 
 boundless plans no music but the solemn strains of the Rakoczy 
 march. Let him collect ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand fol- 
 lowers — as many as he can gather, and marshal them to 
 Veszprem. 
 
 " Veszprem, where on its march to meet the enemy, the 
 whole Hungarian people shall assemble, as mankind will be 
 assembled on the Judgment Day." 
 
44 Immigration Abuses 
 
 X 
 October Sixth, 1849 
 
 The drama of the Hungarian Revolution was hastening to a 
 close, to a close which stands without parallel in the annals of 
 history, the cruelties of a Caligula or a Nero probably not 
 excepted. 
 
 The great battle, the popular battle of freedom and of 
 humanity, was fought and lost ; despotism won and slew its arch- 
 enemy freetiom, and nation bore it to its grave; the tyrants of 
 Austria and of Russia trampled in the dust the banner, the 
 unsullied character and the proud heroic spirit of Hungary. 
 The land had sacrificed upon the altar of liberty upwards of 
 80,000 of her noblest sons. 
 
 As true as it is that great times produce great men, just as 
 true is it that bloody days will produce men of blood, France had 
 her Marat, Austria had her Haynau. 
 
 The chiefs and leaders of the nation were condemned to 
 death. Condemned by a judicial trial? No! By fell, dastardly, 
 cowardly brutal force, by an illegally constituted court martial 
 made up by Haynau the infamous butcher. 
 
 Four Generals were shot: Kiss, Dessewfy, Schweidel and 
 Torok. After them were hanged the Generals Aulich, Nagy 
 Sandor, Lahner, Poltenberg, Knezich, Count Leiningen, Count 
 Vecsey, Damjanics and Colonel Lazar. That the first four were 
 shot and not hanged were special favors secured for them 
 as, for instance, in the case of Kiss, it being the fact that the 
 Austrian General Radetzky was under deep obligations to him; 
 Dessewfy, because when laying down his arms, he had been 
 promised immunity by Prince Lichtenstein, whose influence, how- 
 ever, did not extend beyond securing death by bullet instead of 
 the hangman's rope ; etc. 
 
Immigration Abuses 45 
 
 They all had faced death often enough, and knew the gallows 
 could not dishonor them, that it was glorified by their martyrdom. 
 
 On this very day was shed in Pest the blood of one of the 
 most noble martyrs of freedom; Count Louis Batthyanyi was 
 shot on the evening of that memorable day. 
 
 Before the court martial he ever protested against its com- 
 petence. He said: As a Hungarian he ought to be tried by the 
 Royal Table ; as a Minister, by the house of Peers, that, therefore, 
 he never would answer before an exceptional court. 
 
 The court martial acquitted him: but his death had been 
 determined in Vienna; a second court martial was convened and 
 he was condemned to die on the gallows. The proud magnate 
 revolted at this mode of death. With a knife, which he succeeded 
 in procuring, he wounded his throat, and thus rendered it physi- 
 cally impossible to be hanged; he was, therefore, shot. In 
 spite of his considerable loss of blood, he marched with a firm 
 step to the place of execution, cried out " filjen a hazam!" 
 ("Long live my country!") and fell pierced by the bullets. 
 
 A few days later they hanged Laszlo Csanyi, the venerable 
 Perenyi, Baron Teszenak, Szacsvay, Prince Woronieczki, Giron, 
 Fekete, and Csernus. 
 
 They all died bravely. They all live and will live forever 
 in the hearts of a grateful nation. 
 
 " The axe, the gibbet and the chain 
 Have done, but done their work in vain." 
 
 Louis Kossuth became an exile. He escaped to- Asia Minor 
 and became a protege of the Sultan of Turkey. 
 
 The people's folk-songs have clothed his parting words, his 
 last good-bye to his native land, into a song, known in Hungary 
 as the Kossuth Song and sung at his funeral by hundreds of thou- 
 sands of voices: 
 
40 Immigration Abuses 
 
 My trembling arms I stretch to hold 
 My land in fond embrace, 
 My Fatherland ! The tears like rain 
 Course down thy true son's face; 
 Untrue, unfaithful was thy race, 
 But dearest home, naught can efface 
 Thy faithful love, thy gentle grace. 
 
 Accept the filial vow I make 
 Now that I go away. 
 Thy picture sweet with me I take 
 To keep it green for aye ! 
 
 I swear beneath this azure sky. 
 That e'en when in my grave I lie, 
 E'en then a true Hungarian I ! 
 
 That sweeter be the dreams in death. 
 
 Before my leave I take 
 
 A handful earth from Magyar heath, 
 
 A pillow soft to make. 
 
 On Magyar earth, beloved and blessed. 
 
 Where'er I die I shall find rest 
 
 In death e'en thus, my love attest. 
 
 His captivity in Asia Minor was brought to an end by the 
 sublimely magnificent offer of the American nation and thanks 
 to the broad statesmanship, the mighty genius and generous 
 heart of Daniel Webster, he was brought to our land beneath the 
 protection of the stars and stripes, and when he stepped from the 
 war frigate Mississippi, he was a free man, breathing the air of 
 a republic. 
 
 His visit to the United States was fruitful only in that 
 respect, that it secured to the cause of Hungary the moral 
 support of a mighty nation. 
 
 True, Kossuth had expected more, but the immortal George 
 Washington, called from his evergreen grave in Mount Vernon 
 a decided stop to political entanglements with continental powers, 
 and Kossuth went back to England, taking with him material aid 
 of one kind, moral support, and the idolizing appreciations of the 
 American people for him individually, who had come here not a 
 hero crowned with glorious victories, but a defeated chieftain of 
 
Immigration Abuses 47 
 
 liberty crowned only with the crown of thorns of crushing defeat 
 at the hands of barbaric Russia, despotic Austria and black treason. 
 
 He returned to England, and for years and years, with word 
 and pen, he agitated for and in behalf of the cause of freedom 
 throughout Europe. Immortal heroes like Mazzini, Garibaldi, 
 were his co-laborers. 
 
 Years rolled on and the sun rose, and the tide ebbed and 
 flowed, and one day he awoke to the knowledge of the fact that 
 the generation had caught another spirit than that which he had 
 aroused. Hungary became reconciled by creating a new and 
 liberal constitution to defend which the King made solemn oath 
 before the nation. His brothers in exile went home and took up 
 their work where they had left off after the dark days of Vilagos. 
 
 Count Julius Andrassy, once hung in effigy by orders of an 
 Austrian military chief, became Hungarian minister president and, 
 later on. Chancellor of the dual empire-kingdom ; and when Hun- 
 gary's statesman, Francis Deak, Kossuth's associate in the 
 ministry of 1848, died, the queen knelt at his bier and paid her 
 tribute of reverence and respect and gratitude to him who 
 brought this reconciliation about. 
 
 Kossuth looked about with amazement. But he did not 
 yield. The cities and the counties and the nation called him 
 home, but he did not yield. He did not trust the existing con- 
 dition of affairs. Hungary must be free, he cried, the freedom 
 which you Magyars now enjoy is the freedom of the bird whose 
 gilded cage has been enlarged. 
 
 In the meantime the country prospered, the nation grew 
 strong and mighty and powerful. 
 
 He had settled down in a suburb of the city of Turin in Italy 
 and he awaited there the coming of the reaper, — a man with- 
 out a country. 
 
 Do you remember the heartrending, touching romance of the 
 Reverend Everett Hale, " The Man Without a Country " ? 
 
 What were the sufferings of poor Captain Philip Nolan 
 
48 Immigration Abuses 
 
 dying in mid-ocean, his tear-bedimmed eyes trying to catch a 
 glimpse of the stars and stripes of his country, which, in the 
 impulse of a moment, he had wished never to have seen, to the 
 45 years of suffering of Louis Kossuth? 
 
 You, my Hungarian friends, who may read this book, you 
 and I, are natives of a land, more beauteous than beautiful, where 
 every clod is a memory, where the grass of the fields had been 
 irrigated by the blood of countless thousands of nameless heroes, 
 where the boughs and twigs of trees sough and sigh and mourn- 
 fully tell that from among them were taken the gibbets on which 
 the martyrs of Arad died; where history weaves a sublime 
 memory to every ruin ; where the waters of the blue Danube and 
 the blond Tisza tell tales of the heroism of the people who inhabit 
 their shores, and where the summits of the Tatra looked down on 
 a race of freeborn men who had for a thousand years kept 
 their home given to them by Arpad; and while we are far from 
 this home, we are, of our own choice, citizens of this great 
 republic at the birth of which giant minds and noble souls of 
 Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and Adams, moulded 
 the shape of men's thoughts and which, in its ripe manhood, gave 
 the world men of the calibre of Webster and Clay, of Lincoln and 
 Grant, of Seward, of Garfield and Blaine, of McKinley and of 
 Theodore Roosevelt — over us smiles the azure sky of a home 
 but Kossuth could but dream of his native land. 
 
 On the 20th of March, 1894, under the sun of Italy, his 
 heart grew cold and he is no more. They buried him in his 
 native land. A nation knelt at the bier, a continent shed tears, 
 a world mourned over the loss. 
 
 To us and to posterity, his name is a sacred memory and 
 a sanctified inheritance, inspiring us to love the land wherein 
 our cradle stood, but with no lesser love to love our new home. 
 
 The Hungarians in Cleveland, Ohio, have erected in his 
 memory a fitting monument. Thanks, thanks to you, Magyars 
 of the City of Cleveland ! 
 
Immigration Abuses 49 
 
 Let the monument erected teach our children's children, in 
 looking at the same, to be liberty-loving, to be truly religious in 
 their faith in everything that is elevating, noble and sublime 
 in men's mind and heart, although I well know that — 
 
 " Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven, no pyramids set off 
 his memories, but the eternal substance of his greatness, to which I leave 
 him." 
 
 Immortal Kossuth ! Rest in peace ! Humanity will keep thy 
 memory green until time shall be lost in eternity. 
 
 XI 
 The "Ausgleich" 
 
 Of course, to every reader of this volume, it is clear that I 
 am not writing the history of the Magyars or the story of Hun- 
 gary. I am only giving a bird's-eye view of the same, just to 
 show how great, how noble the race, how brave the people, how 
 glorious her past ; I am only paying my tribute of admiration to 
 my native land and her inhabitants, so that never, never shall I 
 be charged with the accusation conveyed in the old proverb which 
 says: "It is a foul bird that dirties its own nest." My motives 
 are, I dare to claim it boldly and proudly, the purest. While I 
 do not despair of the future of dear old Magyarland, but to-day 
 with the Tiszas, the Kristoffys, the Fejervarys, and the others at 
 the helm, I am reminded of the old Roman who exclaimed: 
 " Videant consules, nequid respublica detrimenti capiat." 
 
 Not writing history, I shall only give, in outlining sketches, 
 the chapter relating to the " Ausgleich," by which name the pres- 
 ent historical-political relationship of Hungary to the Austrian 
 Empire is known. 
 
50 Immigration Abuses 
 
 The Hungarian revolution was at an end. The Russian 
 Czar had saved the throne of Francis Joseph. 
 
 The period of bloody revenge, dire, cowardly, brutal revenge, 
 had come. The patriots were murdered. 
 
 The prisons were filled with thousands and thousands of 
 Magyar men, nay more, Magyar noble women were publicly 
 flogged for their participation in the struggle for liberty, the 
 honveds^ were forced into Austrian military service. Sorrow and 
 suffering came into the land, which at first came under a military 
 government, later on became a province of German-Austria. This 
 period of Magyarland's history is known as the Bach period, 
 named so after the Austrian Prime Minister, Bach. Magyar- 
 land was torn into shreds, divided into provinces and districts, the 
 most iron absolutism obtained. All of the Magyar people were 
 excluded from participation in public affairs, the German lan- 
 guage was made the official language of the country, all national 
 institutions and aspirations were crushed. Such condition of 
 affairs, of course, could not last very long. The French-Italian 
 war of 1859 was the first blow given to Austrian absolutism, and 
 in 1861 Francis Joseph convened the Hungarian Parliament and 
 attempted to bring about a reconciliation. Francis Deak pro- 
 claimed his famous principle of " Jogfolytonossag," the continuity 
 of the law of the land, and the attempt was a failure. Then 
 came, in 1866, the Prussian War, and Francis Joseph turned to 
 the brave Magyar people to save the once proud Austrian Empire 
 from utter annihilation as a world power. The reconciliation be- 
 came an accomplished fact in the year 1867, and the Magyar 
 laws of 1848 were recognized by him, the nation, in Parliament 
 assembled, changing certain enactments of these laws of 1848. 
 
 The reconciliation, known as the " Ausgleich," is the gigantic 
 work of Francis Deak, one of the greatest statesmen of the 
 world, and of all times. 
 
 ' Honved : defenders of the land ; the name by which the Magyar 
 volunteers of the revolution were known. 
 
Immigration Abuses 51 
 
 On June 8th, 1867, Francis Joseph and his wife Elizabeth, 
 the martyr queen, were duly crowned as King, i. e., Queen of Hun- 
 gary. Count Julius Andrassy became the minister president. 
 The interesting historical data is, that this same Count Julius 
 Andrassy had been, in 1849, sentenced to death by this same 
 Francis Joseph — that is to say, was thus sentenced to the gallows 
 in the name of Francis Joseph — but who, to escape this igno- 
 minious death, had fled to England. The Austrian bloodthirsty 
 avengers, therefore, to carry the sentence into effect, hung him in 
 effigy ! Count Julius Andrassy became later on the Chancellor of 
 the dual Empire-Kingdom. 
 
 Now let me take up the " Ausgleich." 
 
 Even before the days of fateful Mohacs, Hungary had been, 
 temporarily at least, in connection with Austria-Hungary, electing 
 as kings certain rulers of Austria. That is to say, the same 
 person who was at certain periods the Emperor of Austria, became 
 — by election — also the King of Hungary; but Hungary and 
 Austria remained absolutely apart from one another, absolutely 
 independent of each other; nothing but a naked personal union 
 of the head of the two nations being in existence. 
 
 In the year 1723 came, by the adoption of Chapters I, H 
 and ni of the laws of that year, the laws heretofore referred to 
 as the "Pragmatic Sanction," Hungary into a closer — alas, too 
 close — • relationship with Austria. 
 
 I have, however, already said that this very " Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion " — the laws of regulating the right of succession of the 
 Magyar kings — distinctly provides for the maintenance and the 
 sanctity of the ancient constitution, the independence and the 
 sovereignty of the Magyar nation. Later laws. Chapters VHI 
 and XII of 1741 and Chapter X of 1791, especially provide that 
 Hungary and the Hungarian territories are a free and independent 
 land, and not subject to any people nor in any wise subordinate 
 to any people of the land reigned over by the person who might 
 be both King of Hungary and Austrian Emperor. The " Prag- 
 
52 Immigration Abuses 
 
 matic Sanction " gives the connection between the two countries 
 a legal basis. The law, however, does not speak of mutual af- 
 fairs, as for instance : the defence of the land, the army, etc. 
 
 The laws of 1848, which inaugurated most far-reaching gov- 
 ernmental reforms, speak also in generalities, and, although 
 Chapter III recognizes " common " mutual affairs, still no method 
 is provided to regulate them. 
 
 The " Ausgleich " entered into by Hungary and by Austria — 
 the first by Chapter XII of the laws of 1867, the last by its laws 
 of Dec. 2 1st — provides as follows: 
 
 The two countries are independent and sovereign, each has 
 its own territory, its own citizenship, each its separate and dis- 
 tinct government. The union does not create one greater or 
 enlarged government, one country does not absorb the other. In 
 the person of the head of the " union " there are concentrated 
 two separate and distinct individualities: one is the Emperor of 
 Austria, the other is the King of Hungary, whose title is not 
 " Emperor of Austria-Hungary," but is : " Emperoi- of Austria 
 and Apostolic King of Hungary, etc.," and as such is he named 
 in international treaties. 
 
 According to Chapter XII of the laws of 1867, based upon 
 the " Pragmatic Sanction " — (out of this older law there had 
 flowed most naturally certain " common " affairs to be looked 
 after by both countries as, /. i., the person of the ruler and the 
 provisions for his household, the defence of the country) — the 
 dual Monarchy — the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of 
 Hungary recognized as "common," "mutual" affairs — (in 
 Magyar called " kozos iigyek ") all " foreign affairs " which 
 relate to the dual monarchy in its entirety, i. e., to both countries. 
 Thus the dual monarchy has but one " common " diplomatic and 
 commercial representative for both countries ; treaties — diplomatic 
 and commercial treaties with foreign countries are discussed by 
 and negotiated with the Austrian Ministry and the Magyar Min- 
 istry separately, and then referred for final action to the common 
 
Immigration Abuses 53 
 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs ; the two ministries of the two coun- 
 tries communicate the foreign treaties entered into to their re- 
 spective law-making authorities separately and independently of 
 each other. 
 
 Another " common " affair is the army, its organization and 
 its maintenance. The King is the supreme power. The Magyar 
 army, however, is solely and exclusively the creation of the 
 Magyar Parliament. Magyar law provides for its conscription, 
 the duration of service, the establishment of its relation to the 
 State, its organization and its rights and privileges. 
 
 Each and every change intended in the internal life of the 
 army must be first sanctioned by the Magyar Parliament, and 
 the civil rights of the Magyar soldier are under the protection 
 of Magyar laws and not under the military law of Austria. Laws 
 relating to the army are enacted by the law-making authorities 
 of the two countries independently of each other and, in case of 
 divergencies of opinion and failure of unanimity, the two legisla- 
 tive authorities as represented by the delegations appoint confer- 
 ence committees to consult with their respective Ministers of War 
 and they with the common Ministers of War for both countries. 
 
 Financial — Money affairs are common affairs only as far 
 aos they relate to the appropriations for the diplomatic service, the 
 common army, etcetera, and the two countries agree with each 
 other as to the " quota " of their respective contributions. To ar- 
 rive at this " quota " the two countries appoint delegates, the 
 appointment being made by their respective legislative authorities. 
 These delegates receive from the common ministry the proposed 
 appropriation bills, and then in conference assembled agree upon a 
 priation bills, and then in conference assembled agree upon a 
 " quota " to be submitted by them to their respective legislative 
 authorities, the Magyars to the Magyar Parliament, the Austrians 
 to the Austrian Reichsrath. If they cannot agree, then the two 
 legislative authorities pass their own appropriation bills and the 
 Emperor-King sanctions the one which he deems best. Communi- 
 
54 Immigration Abuses 
 
 cations between the legislative authorities and the Emperor and 
 King are made through the respective ministers. 
 
 The " Atisgleich " is made for ten years at a time. The 
 last " Ausgleich " made, expired in 1897, and since then a status 
 quo exists which year after year has grbwn to be more unbear- 
 able for Hungary, until to-day the situation is more than alarm- 
 ing, the dual monarchy being in danger of dissolution.^ 
 
 The common affairs of the two countries are looked after 
 by the " delegations," each country appointing — annually — 60 
 delegates. These two delegations meet and transact business 
 separately and apart from each other, and are absolutely free 
 anH independent of each other. They communicate with each 
 other in writing, confer in writing and, only after three attempts 
 to agree upon certain matters under discussion have proven fruit- 
 less, do they meet in joint session. Each delegation must be 
 present in equal number, but if one be more numerous than the 
 other, the numerical superiority is reduced by drawing lots, the 
 names drawn retiring, so that Austrians and Hungarians are 
 present in like numbers. Decisions are arrived at by a majority 
 of the votes cast. At the joint sessions, the presidents of the dele- 
 gations preside alternately, the Magyar at one the Austrian at the 
 next meeting. The decisions of the " delegation " are communi- 
 cated by the Ministry to the Emperor-King, who sanctions them, 
 when they are communicated — separately — to the legislative au- 
 thorities of the two governments and then are embodied into 
 their laws without any further action on the part of these legisla- 
 tures. 
 
 At the head of the dual monarchy stands the person of the 
 King and Emperor, the Magyar King and the Austrian Emperor, 
 
 ' Since going to press with this book, information has been received 
 that the existing differences between the members of the coalition and the 
 crown have been somewhat adjusted; or shall I say that an impending 
 calamity was temporarily averted. 
 
 Premier Fejervary has resigned, and a new cabinet was formed by 
 Dr. Alexander Wekerle, an intrepid, level-headed, honorable and eminent 
 statesman, trusted and well beloved by the people, and who succeeded to 
 induce such great and staunch patriots as Count Julius Andrassy, Count 
 
Immigration Abuses 55 
 
 who reigns by the common consent of the two countries, through 
 his common ministry appointed by him. These ministers, however, 
 have absolutely nothing to do with the internal affairs of either 
 of the two countries and exert no influence whatever over their 
 own national affairs. The Magyar Ministers and the Austrian 
 Ministers — of course both countries have their own responsible 
 parliamentary ministries for the government of their own af- 
 fairs — do exert a very powerful influence over the " common " 
 affairs and politics of their respective countries. 
 
 The Emperor-King appoints the Common Ministry, the Min- 
 ister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of War and the Minister 
 of Finance. They are responsible to the two countries and are 
 liable to impeachment. 
 
 As " common " affair of the two countries are considered — 
 in addition to what I mentioned above — the common national 
 debt, the regulation of the banking system, the regulation of the 
 tariff and custom duties, and then the regulation of the affairs; 
 of Bosnia and the Herczegovina, . entrusted to Austria-Hungary 
 by the Berlin Conference or Congress (1878). 
 
 All these things here told are encyclopedical repetitions of 
 facts well known, and it has not been my intention to state here 
 more than the mere fact of the nature of the " Ausgleich," so as 
 to repeat the main thing I want the reader to have constantly 
 before his mental vision, namely that that political compact — 
 the " Ausgleich " — is based upon Hungary's independence as 
 an independent country, and is not, as some American news- 
 papers have lately characterized it to be, a political bargain and 
 sale of Magyarland's ancient constitution. The ancient Kingdom 
 of Hungary is — by the grace of God — free and independent, 
 and is not a province of Austria. 
 
 Adalbert Apponyi, and Francis Kossuth to accept portfolios in his cabinet. 
 A ministry composed of such men, who are justly numbered among 
 the best sons of the nation, will have the tendency of mollifying the aroused 
 passions of the people; but for how long? The great struggle will come, 
 as surely as day follows night, for the grievances of the Hungarian nation 
 are too numerous and too deeply rooted to permit more than temporary 
 pacification. 
 
5^ Immigration Abuses 
 
 XII 
 Intellectual Life 
 
 The oldest traces of Magyar intellectual life show — and 
 this is a most interesting observation — the national political 
 coloring. They reach back into the last years of the ninth cen- 
 tury and treat of legends relating to the conquest of the land. The 
 legends, stories, songs relating to Attila — Etele — mentioned in 
 the closing part of the " Niebelungen-Song," the Magyar has 
 appropriated and made a part of his own traditions. 
 
 The old minstrels sing of the Hun King; of Kiirtos Lehel 
 (Lehel, the horn-blowing leader), and of Bardos Botand (Botand, 
 spear-bearer), but to-day we have no portions or parts of these 
 songs. 
 
 The oldest literary productions in existence are a funeral ora- 
 tion in prose, dating back as far as the 13th century, and some 
 sacred songs and prayers in forceful rhythm and rhymes. 
 
 In the mediaeval ages the intellectual life of the nation re- 
 ceived considerable impetus from the priests and monks, and in 
 the isth century came the first translations of the Bible. Hymns, 
 prayers, religious legends dating from this century have been 
 preserved, and plainly show the steady growth of the national life. 
 
 King Matthias Corvinus — Matyas az igazsagos — had a 
 court, known throughout all Europe as the foremost in intellec- 
 tual life, and the founder of the greatest library of his time, con- 
 taining seven thousand books and manuscripts. It was he who 
 introduced into Hungary the art of printing (1472), before it had 
 become known in England, Holland, Spain or Austria. Famous 
 Italian artists and architects exchanged their Florentinean homes 
 for Buda, and the capital of Hungary became the centre-point 
 of European civilization. The glory was of short duration. For 
 350 years no Magyar king resided in the ancient royal town. 
 
Immigration Abuses 57 
 
 To name here the great minds who shaped the intellectual 
 life of the nation of that period, would require to write the 
 history of the war between the Protestant and the Catholic 
 church, and the efforts of the two to gain supremacy over one 
 another ; and it is the Catholic priest, and the Protestant minister, 
 who teaches the nation; teaching, however, not only religious 
 tenets, faiths, principles, but also teaching patriotism. 
 
 It is best, however, to mention no names until we come down 
 to the beginning of the 17th century, when, with Peter Pazmany, 
 the Cardinal of Esztergom, we can begin to count the truly great 
 Magyar writers. Nickolas Zrinyi was equally great as a hero 
 fighting the Turks as he was as a Magyar epic writer. 
 
 Then follow a century or two of national life in which the 
 Latin language is being made the " official " language of his- 
 torians, memoir writers, philosophic essayists, and collectors of 
 folk-lore. George Pray and Stephen Katona occupy among these 
 high rank. The period has but one great Magyar writer, Francis 
 Faludi, a Jesuit father, whose songs are even to-day among the 
 best known folk-songs. 
 
 Then come Magyar writers: Bessenyei, Baroczi, Peczeli, 
 Virag, Revai and Gyongyosi, and with these the influence of the 
 Latin poets and authors was almost definitely at an end. 
 
 Michael Vitez, Csokonai, and Alexander Kisfaludy are the 
 favorite authors and poets of the first decade of the 19th century, 
 but the greatest Magyar writer of that period is Francis Kazinczy, 
 the founder of modern Magyar literature. 
 
 Daniel Berzsenyi and Francis Kolcsey are worthy disciples 
 of great Kazinczy. Joseph Katona was the founder of the truly 
 Magyar school of dramatists, and his Bank-Ban is one of the 
 greatest of dramas ever written since the days of Shakespeare. 
 
 Charles Kisfaludy is the standard bearer of modern fiction 
 and comedy writers. 
 
 Then came the great master minds and immortal geniuses of 
 Michael Vorosmarty, Michael Tompa, John Arany and Alexander 
 
5^ Immigration Abuses 
 
 Petofi, followed and surrounded by one hundred and odd writers 
 of lesser importance, Gregorius Czuczor, John Garay, Andrew 
 Fay, Joseph Bajza among them, all bent in one direction to 
 establish a pure Magyar literature. 
 
 Count Stephen Szechenyi is the leader of the New Hungary. 
 It was he, who in 1825 gave the income of his estate, 60,000 
 florins, that year, to the foundation of the Magyar Academy of 
 Sciences. In 1830 he published his famous work "Hitel" — 
 " Credit," laying down a political program of immense magnitude 
 following with other national and political economic works of 
 like nature, among which his " Kelet Nepe " — " The People of 
 the East," is of the foremost importance. 
 
 The fiction writers of that period were, in the main, faithful 
 disciples of Szechenyi's poetical school the three most renowned 
 of them being Baron Nickolas Josika, Baron Joseph Eotvos and 
 Baron Sigismund Kemeny, Josika being the Magyar Walter Scott, 
 Eotvos the Magyar Hugo and Kemeny the Magyar Balzac. 
 
 Eotvos's " Falu Jegyzoje " exerted in Hungary an influence 
 as great and as beneficial as Mrs. Beecher Stowe's " Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin " did in the United States. Under the name, " The Village 
 Notary," it has been made known to English-American readers. 
 Another novel of the same author, " The Carthusians," is one of 
 the great literary features of the world. 
 
 In 1837 Hungary founded a national theatre, and Magyar 
 actors and actresses are worthy compeers of their foremost col- 
 leagues of Germany, France, England and America. Gabriel 
 Egressy, Martin Lendvay, Joseph Toth, Koloman Szerdahelyi, 
 Joseph Szigeti, Mme. Dery, Mme. Jokai-Laborfalvy Rosa 
 Madame Cornelia Prielle, Madame Hegedus, are but few of the 
 stars of the first class. Of course Hungary has as splendid trans- 
 lations of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, MoHere, Hugo and so 
 forth, as any nation could ever hope to possess of the classics of 
 another country, but she has also a very excellent dramatic litera- 
 ture of her own. Edward Szigligeti is a grand master of dramatic 
 
Immigration Abuses 59 
 
 art ; Vorosmarty, Charles Kisf aludy, Ignatz Nagy, are among the 
 good ones, the best dramatic authors of that period. 
 
 Poets of great merit of that period are John Krizsa and John 
 Erdelyi. The four greatest poets of Hungary I have named 
 already — Vorosmarty, Tompa, Petofi and Arany. 
 
 Vorosmarty's greatest merit is to have freed Magyar poetical 
 literature of the Latin, the German and the French influences 
 which overshadowed all previous poetical productions of Hun- 
 garian songsters, and to create a distinctly Magyar spirit and 
 Magyar style, pure, elevated and noble. One of his most faithful 
 scholars was Michal Tompa, a great lyric writer, a singer of 
 sweet songs. 
 
 Alexander Petofi's genius has been compared by no lesser 
 authority than Herman Grimm, to be akin to that of Homer, of 
 Shakespeare and Goethe. Of course, it is easy to smile at this 
 and to say it is exaggeration, but Petofi is one of the greatest 
 poets of all ages and of all nations of the earth. 
 
 John Arany is his rightful successor in the admiration and 
 idolizing love of the Magyars. The world's literature has been 
 enriched by his ballads, his poetical romances, and lyric epics. 
 
 What Petofi and Arany are in Magyar poetical literature, is 
 Maurus Jokai in the field of novel writing. Jokai has been 
 universally recognized because of having been introduced, by 
 splendid translations, into the literature of all civilized nations,, 
 while Petofi and Arany are more efficient to be transplanted by 
 the very nature of the form of their writings. Clever translations 
 of the two do exist — this is true — but translations as great as 
 the original have not yet been created. Of course not. Burns 
 and Poe, for instance, have been translated into all continental 
 languages, but never entirely successfully. Truly great poets are 
 rare, truly great translators of poetry are equally rare. Let us 
 return to Jokai. He is the favorite novel writer not only of 
 Hungary, but also of Germany, England and France, and the 
 United States, where his works are almost as well known as he 
 is known at home. 
 
6o Immigration Abuses 
 
 *>' 
 
 As historians, are great Ladislaus Szalay and Michael Hor- 
 vath; as archeologist, Arnold Ipolyi; as grammarians, John 
 Fogarassy and Gregorius Czuczor; towering over both stand, 
 however, the figures of Paul Hunfalvy, Joseph Budenz and 
 Armin Vambery. 
 
 As modern times approach, the list of Magyar poets and 
 writers expands. Paul Gyulai is the foremost of poets, equalled 
 only by Charles Szasz. Then come brilliant minstrels like Louis 
 Tolnai, Joseph Kiss, Alexander Endrodi, Emil Abranyi, Julius 
 Reviczky and a hundred and some odd such as the poetical litera- 
 ture of all nations possesses. Among the prose writers rank high 
 Coloman Mikszath, among the dramatic writers Emerich Madach 
 and Gregorius Csiky. 
 
 Of course, I am not writing a history or even a review of 
 Magyar literature. I only wish to show the wealth of the Magyar 
 nation on the field of belles lettres. I wish I could point tout 
 one great virtue of all Magyar literature, but it would require 
 long pages of illustration, and would make this volume grow into 
 immense proportions, but I do state it here, what is well known to 
 all Magyars, and it is this : 
 
 There is no nation in the world whose literature is in such 
 direct, close and intimate ratio with its political life as is Magyar 
 literature with Magyar political life. 
 
 Magyar literature has not only expressed Magyar life, but it 
 has nourished it and kept it alive. 
 
 Magyar poets, Magyar novel-writers, ilagyar publicists have 
 been truer, stancher patriots than have been — especially during 
 the last 25 years — the Magyar politicians, the Magyar statesmen. 
 
Immigration Abuses 6i 
 
 XIII 
 Hungarian Art 
 
 Two things are better known about Hungary than anything 
 else, these are Hungarian music and Hungarian wine. The 
 Magyars are a musical people, their very language is marvel- 
 ously rhythmic and musical. Song and music, music and song, 
 are parts and parcels of national life. From their most ancient 
 days, when the high priest (Taltos) performed his religious cere- 
 monies amid song and amid music down to to-day, when, for 
 instance, every political meeting, every christening, every wed- 
 ding, every funeral has its song and music, the Magyars culti- 
 vated these two arts. They always sing, be they joyous or sad, 
 and it is a Magyar saying that " sirva vigad a magyar," " weep- 
 ingly enjoys himself the Magyar." The first traces of Magyar 
 music in existence are hymnals. At the song festival at Wart- 
 bourg in 1208 — best known by Wagner's great opera — there 
 was also a Magyar-born minstrel — Klinsor — participating. 
 
 In a history of music and musical art the Magyar names 
 will be met with on every page — e. g., in the history of the opera 
 there is the name John Sigmund Cousser, born in Pozsony, 1657, 
 in the history of " Church Music " there is John Francisci, born 
 in Besztercze-Banya in 169 1. In the story of orchestral leaders 
 there will be found the name John Nepomuk Hummel (1778), 
 also, known as a great pianist, and of John Fusz. Among the 
 great Magyar musicians the world knows best are : Francis Liszt, 
 Francis Erkel, Karl Goldmark, Karl Them, Eugen Hubay, Ste- 
 phen Heller, Cornelius Abranyi, Count Geza Zichy, Joseph 
 Joachim, Edward Remenyi, Leopold Auer, Raphael Joseffy, Hans 
 Richter, Anton Seidl, Edmund Singer and Sucher. 
 
 Among Hungarian song composers the world knows Beni 
 Egressy, Ladiszlaus Zimay, Victor Langer, Ernest Lanyi, Ignacz 
 Bodnar, Julius Kaldy and — not to forget — Rozsavolgyi. 
 
62 Immigration Abuses 
 
 In the musical composition of the world's great composers 
 we find countless traces of adopted Magyar songs having 
 been used freely. We find them in the musical works of 
 Joseph Haydn, Louis von Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Carl 
 Maria Weber, Joachim Raff, John Brahms and Henry Bulow. 
 Hector Berlioz took into his Damnation of Faust the ancient 
 Magyar Rakoczi March ; Jules Massenet took for his Marche He- 
 ro'ique a transcription of the Rakoczi and Hunyadi marches com- 
 bined ; Leo Delibes' " Coppelia " is a Magyar musical motivum ; 
 Mascagni's " L'Ami Fritz " is Magyar music ; Thalberg Rubin- 
 stein and Sarasate have used Magyar music freely and frequently. 
 
 In the field of the art of the brush and the chisel — painting, 
 and sculpture — the Magyar people point with pardonable pride 
 to their own great artists. 
 
 John Kupeczky (1667-1740) and Adam Menyoky (1673- 
 1757) were great painters, both belonging to the school of Rem- 
 brandt and Van Dyke. They were not the first-comers, though, 
 because we now know that the great Albrecht Diirer, the maestro 
 of Nuremberg, was of Magyar origin. 
 
 Moritz Than and Charles Lotz are almost of our own days, 
 both great painters of world-wide reputation. Great as they, if 
 not greater, is Michael Zichy, and a giant figure, as a master of 
 his art, is Michael Munkacsy. Other great Magyar painters are 
 Julius Benczur, Henry Angeli, Leopold Horowitz, Nickolas Bara- 
 bas, Arpad Feszti, Tilhamer Margitay, Paul Vago, Bertalan Karl- 
 owsky, Philip Laszlo and Gustav Keleti. Miss Vilma Parlaghi 
 is one of the many great artists of Hungary, having as associates 
 Miss Ida Konek and Gizella Nemes. 
 
 As engravers — wood and copper — the Hungarians name 
 Gustave Morelli, Eugene Doby, Louis Michalak, Gabriel Michalek, 
 Gabriel Kadar and Bela Krieger. 
 
 As sculptors we had Stephen Ferenczy, the great Joseph 
 Engel, the equally great Nickolas Izso. Alois Strobl and George 
 Zala are our contemporaries. Among the sculptors of recent 
 
Immigration Abuses 63 
 
 years we can name John Fadrusz, Julius Donath, Joseph Rona, 
 Anton Lorantffy, Julius Bezeredy and Anton Szecsi. 
 
 As architects of great renown were known Michael PoUak, 
 Matthias Zitterbarth, ti'rancis Kasscik, and the greatest of these, 
 Nictolas Ybel, Emerich Steindl, Alois Hauszman and Victor 
 Czigler. 
 
 Hungary has to-day a long list of art schools and art muse- 
 ums, and I content myself with the foregoing in showing that 
 Hungary is a modern nation, with modern aims, aspirations, 
 ambitions; a nation standing upon a high pinnacle of modern 
 culture. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Schools 
 
 The first schools in Hungary for the instruction of the youth 
 were those under care of the Catholic clergy, the parish priests, 
 the monks and the bishops. This continued to be the case until 
 the reformation, when municipal schools, having lay teachers, 
 began to be founded. On the main, however, there was but very 
 little schooling, teaching done for the elementary youth, except 
 the catechism, and in the higher classes or, rather, higher schools, 
 the preparation for the entry into the ministry. Veszprem and 
 Szekesfehervar had high schools as early as in the 13th century, 
 and in 1367 Pecs had the first Magyar university. Nagyvarad 
 and Esztergom had high schools, Pozsony an " Academy Istro- 
 politana," and King Matthias founded a great university at Buda. 
 
 The present condition of the school and educational system of 
 Hungary is regulated by a comparatively new law, that of Chap- 
 ter XXX of 1883 and without saying a syllable too much, I dare 
 to say that the school and educational system of that beautiful 
 land compares most favorably with that of the most advanced 
 States of our own Union. 
 
64 Immigration Abuses 
 
 I have only the official figures of 1890 at hand. According 
 to these — in 1890 — 65 per cent, of the male population over the 
 age of six years could read and write. Pretty good showing! 
 Infinitely better than that of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Servia, Russia. 
 I am told, but I have no official data, that the percentage of 
 illiterates is growing perceptibly less year by year. 
 
 The Royal University at Budapest is the foremost of the 
 Kingdom. The annual appropriation for its maintenance is 890,- 
 000 gulden, and it had last year 210 professors and 4,500 students. 
 The lectures comprise theology (Catholic), law, politics, medicine, 
 philosophy and pedagogy. 
 
 The Francis Joseph University at Kolozsvar has 70 profes- 
 sors and 650 students; the curriculum is philosophy, science of 
 languages, history, natural philosophy, mathematics and medicine. 
 The Joseph University of Technicology at Budapest has over 
 100 professors and 1,200 students. The main branches of study 
 are civil and mining engineering and architecture. 
 
 There are in Hungary 49 institutions for the preparation of 
 the calling of the ministry and priesthood; they had last year 
 1,690 students. The Roman Catholics have 25, the Greek Catho- 
 lics 4, the Protestants 10, the Unitarians i, the Jews i, the other 
 8 are Roman Catholic institutions, Seminariums under the care 
 of various Catholic orders, Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, 
 Paulists and others. 
 
 There are ten law schools, called law academies : two main- 
 tained by the state, 5 by the Catholic Church and 3 by the Prot- 
 estant Church. 
 
 There is a National High School for Drawing — a prepara- 
 tory school for teachers to teach drawing. 
 
 Ait Selmeczbanya there is a National High School for Min- 
 ing and Forestry. 
 
 At Budapest there is a High School of Veterinary Surgery. 
 At Magyar-Ovar a marvelously fine Academy for Agricul- 
 ture and Economy. 
 
Immigration Abuses 65 
 
 The high schools of Hungary (in this designation I include 
 institutions corresponding to our high schools and lyceums, 
 normal schools, and preparatory classes of our universities) are 
 maintained by the State and by the religious denominations, the 
 latter, however, some entirely and some but partly under govern- 
 mental supervision. The right of the various churches to main- 
 tain educational institutions is based upon historic grounds, and 
 it would be too tedious work to explain it here how, for instance, 
 one Roman Catholic High School has the right to choose its own 
 professors and to have its own curriculum, while another must 
 have its choice of a professor affirmed by the State. The State 
 has 19 Gymnasiums, 24 Real-Schools, and it has partially under 
 its control 17 more Gymnasiums, named Royal Gymnasiums, but 
 belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. In addition to these 
 17, the Roman Catholic Church has 43 more Gymnasiums; under 
 the care of the Piarrists 20, the Benedictines 6, the Premontarians 
 5, the Cistercians 4, the Jesuits i, the Greek Catholics have 4, 
 the Augustin Evangeliques 25, the Evangelists Reform Church 
 has 27, the Unitarians have 2, the August Evangelical and the 
 Evangelical Reformed jointly maintain one. 
 
 There are, therefore, in the State 154 Gymnasiums and 33 
 Real-Schools, for each 80,000 inhabitants one high school. 
 
 Nearest to these institutions of learning are the normal 
 schools for girls, the State maintaining 22 of them ; the agricul- 
 tural high schools, schools of forestry, schools of grape culture, 
 schools of mining, schools of zoology, dairy schools, bee-culture 
 schools, and hydrometric schools, about 30 in all. Then there are 
 19 higher commercial schools and academies and 46 higher trade 
 schools. 
 
 Of art schools — speaking only of the higher grades — 
 drawing, painting, music, acting, singing — Hungary has 16. 
 
 Military schools 4. 
 
 Preparatory schools for teachers : there are 49 for males and 
 22 for females ; the various religious denominations have about 30. 
 
66 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Then there is one central national high school for physical culture. 
 
 Attendance at school is compulsory. 
 
 The State has 16,838 primary schools, and the various re- 
 ligious denominations maintain 12,660 primary schools. The 
 cost of the maintenance of these elementary schools is 19,100,000 
 florins. The number of teachers employed are 22,280 male and 
 4,200 female teachers. 
 
 The State has 1,970 kindergarten schools. 
 
 Of orphan asylums the Nation has 75 ; of deaf and dumb 
 asylums, i. e., schools, 7; of asylums and schools for the blind, 
 one. There is also one school for idiots and imbeciles. In every 
 prison and house of correction or reformatory the prisoners under 
 20 years of age are being taught to read and to write. 
 
 To speak of the literary societies, scientific bodies and 
 libraries is impossible for want of space. 
 
 The National Museum is truly grand. The National Library 
 has nearly 500,000 volumes of books, 16,000 manuscripts, and 
 15,000 volumes of newspapers. The department of "Documents 
 and Letters" contains 250,000 numbers. The Archaeological De- 
 partment is famous for its wealth. The National Gallery of 
 Painting and Sculpture is equally great. 
 
 Besides the Central National Museum, there are 25 others 
 in various cities of the land, and there are 45 great public libraries, 
 that of the Budapest University having 250,000 volumes. Then 
 there are 76 municipal libraries, 560 school libraries, 313 parochial 
 and 335 society libraries. The readers of the public libraries 
 numbered last year 185,000. 
 
 Well, is it not true, when I said that the Magyar people 
 stand on the high pinnacle of modern 20th-century civilization? 
 And these people are in danger of losing their national independ- 
 ence? No! a thousand times no. In spite of corruption and 
 graft in high places : " el magyar, all Buda meg." 
 
Immigration Abuses 67 
 
 XV 
 Industry and Commerce 
 
 To-day about 800,000 persons are employed in industrial pur- 
 suits in Hungary, taking the designation " industrial pursuit " in 
 the strictest sense, and excluding from it persons employed in 
 the manufacture of articles of luxury, or the strolling, wandering 
 " help '' employed temporarily or periodically ; with them are en- 
 gaged 90,000 apprentices. 
 
 Of the independent manufacturers about 60% have no 
 " help," about 20% had at least steadily employed " help," only 
 about 4,500 firms employ more than twenty workmen in their 
 establishment. 
 
 About 2,900 firms of these 4,500 are independent individual 
 Magyar firms, about 750 are stock companies, about 145 are 
 foreign firms — English, German, and French — established in 
 Hungary ; about 130 are foreign stock companies. 
 
 During the five years last past about one hundred and ten 
 million florins were invested in new industrial enterprises. 
 
 The largest industrial enterprises of Hungary are these 
 (giving here only those who employ steam power or electric 
 power and at least twenty workmen) : Porcelain and Earthen- 
 ware 24, Leather and Hide 45, Tobacco 20, Sugar Refinery 20, 
 Iron Foundry and machines no. Wood Saw Mills 350, Printing 
 offices 75, Flour Mills 1,500, Distilleries 250, Gas Houses 32, 
 Bricklaying 240, Car Building 12, Bent Wood Furniture 10, 
 Paper Manufacturing 22, Shipbuilding 8, Candy 15, Cloth 30, 
 Linen 17, Oil Refinery 20, Household Furniture 60; Match Fac- 
 tory 20, Candle Factory 16, Stone Quarry 18, Mineral Oil 12, 
 Cement 14, Cognac 12, Electro-Technical Apparatus 12, Color 
 Manufacturing 10, Jewelry (artificial and imitation) 38, Starch 
 35, Blue Prints 10, Liquors 15, Glassware 40, Chemical Goods 
 28, Iron Goods 28. 
 
68 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Unfortunately, I have no data to show how great the produc- 
 tions of these enterprises is and how they satisfy the needs of 
 the country, but it is well known that there is hardly any one 
 branch of industry wherein Hungary does not need the help of 
 foreign importations to supply the demand. 
 
 Budapest had in 1900 about 120 industrial stock companies, 
 with an aggregate capital of about 125,000,000 florins, paying, 
 on the average a dividend of 7J4%. 
 
 Outside of the capital, there were in the country at large 
 at that time about 225 industrial stock corporations, with a capital 
 of nearly one hundred million florins; the country, therefore, 
 having altogether about 350 industrial enterprises carried on by 
 stock companies whose combined capital aggregated about two 
 hundred and twenty-five million florins. 
 
 The most important branch of industry of Hungary is the 
 " Flour Mill." Mr. Pillsbury of Minnesota knows this to his 
 sorrow, Hungary being his most powerful competitor to be 
 known as the purveyor of all of the world almost for its need 
 of flour. The last data at my hand as to the export of Magyar 
 flour into the markets of the world dates back to 1900. Into Aus- 
 tria the Magyars exported 4,900,000 Mm., into Germany 185,000, 
 into France 140,000, into England 600,000, into Brazil 75,- 
 000, and in the aggregate about 600,000 Mm. into Switzerland, 
 Belgium, Holland, Turkey, Italy, Bosnia, Sweden, Bulgaria and 
 Servia. 
 
 Next in importance are the distilleries, there being more than 
 450 of them in the land, producing about one hundred and twelve 
 million hectoliters of alcohol. 
 
 Sugar production is next in importance, followed by beer 
 breweries, there being to-day about 20 sugar refineries and about 
 no beer breweries at work. The supply of the sugar refineries 
 is sufficient for the needs of the country, and it exports the sur- 
 plus product, more than a million dollars being paid by the gov- 
 ernment as " prize " money for these exports. 
 
Immigration Abuses 69 
 
 The iron and the electrical industry of the country grows 
 daily, but, in the main, let it be said here that there is enough 
 of elbow-room in Hungary for American capitalists to look 
 around for the most advantageous investments in almost all 
 branches of industry. 
 
 That the Yankee looking for a safe investment of his dol- 
 lars, trots around the globe to find safe, grateful ground where 
 to erect his factory, has overlooked the land of the Magyar, is 
 one of the peculiar things that will happen. Hasn't Schiller said 
 already : " Warum in die Feme schweif en ? Sieh das Gute liegt 
 so nah ! " ^ 
 
 In the year 1900 Hungary had — mentioning only the most 
 important branches — the following classification of its com- 
 merce : 
 
 There were about 2,200 merchants engaged in the sale of 
 earthen and glassware, 3,000 in the sale of wine, 2,600 leather mer- 
 chants, 1,200 merchants of articles of luxury, 4,000 merchants sell- 
 ing articles of fashion, 7,500 timber and wood merchants, 25,000 
 grocers, 7,000 grain merchants, 15,000 dry goods merchants, 1,500 
 stationers and booksellers, 3,000 cloth dealers, 2,000 flour mer- 
 chants, 40,000 " country store " keepers, 3,500 dealers in articles 
 of iron ware, 25,000 in linen ware and dressgoods and drapers, 
 4,000 dealers in horses and oxen and domestic animals, 25,000 
 clothing dealers. 
 
 Hungary has two great centres of commerce, the commercial 
 exchange at Budapest and one at Fiume. The exchange at 
 Budapest has over 2,000 members and over 200 licensed brokers. 
 The main business there done is in grain. The business in 
 wheat alone was in 1900 more than fifteen million Mm., and in 
 corn more than eight million Mm. These " exchanges " have 
 even legal powers and decided in 1900 more than 2,000 cases of 
 dispute. Then there are the so-called " Lloyd Societies," com- 
 mercial bodies also having legal' powers in certain business 
 
 " Why rove into the far away. Behold all that is good is so near. 
 
7° Immigration Abuses 
 
 affairs. The country has fifteen large " elevators," central de- 
 positories; has commercial museums with permanent exhibitions 
 of the products of the nation seeking a market with agencies in 
 foreign countries, especially in the Oriental countries; com- 
 mercial academies, lyceums and high schools, aggregating about 
 150, with about 1,000 professors and 12,000 students. 
 
 One of the causes of the present breach or threatened breach 
 between Hungary and Austria, is the question of the regulation 
 of the tariff between the two countries. 
 
 The Ausgleich of 1867 distinctly declares in § 58 of Chap. 
 XII that the tariff regulation between the two countries is not 
 a common affair of the two countries flowing from the Pragmatic 
 Sanction, because by this Law of Pragmatic Sanction Hungary 
 is an independent country, fully justified to regulate tax and 
 tariff in accordance with her own desires. 
 
 § 59 creates the tariff question between the two countries into 
 a " common " one, but only for such periods of time as they 
 mutually agree, from ten to twenty years, the two countries en- 
 tering into a commercial and tariff treaty. This treaty was 
 renewed in 1878 and again in 1887; since then temporary treaties 
 have been entered into, and Hungary is fighting to-day to main- 
 tain her right to levy a tariff upon importations from Austria, be- 
 cause the Austrian Empire — not Hungary — had all of the 
 milk of the cocoanut and Hungary had but the hard shell. 
 
 In the year 1900 Hungary exported to the United States 
 more than two million florins' worth of articles, imported from 
 the same about 750,000 florins' worth. 76% of her foreign com- 
 merce is with Austria, the greatest part being raw products, and 
 Hungary complains that these raw products, manufactured by 
 the more advanced industry of Austria, are coming back into 
 the land, crushing home industry. 
 
 To advance her industry and commerce Hungary has made 
 the most generous sacrifices to develop her means of communi- 
 cation to a very high degree. 
 
Immigration Abuses 71 
 
 They had in 1890 — my last date — 42,000 kilometers of 
 highways (State and County highways), not counting the muni- 
 cipal and the district and the private — railroad — highways. 
 The network of highways now in progress of completion will add 
 135,000 kilometers thereto. The State controls about 4,000 kilo- 
 meters of water highways; the rivers of Hungary are navigable 
 to a length of about 3,000 kilometers of which the Danube is the 
 most important, navigable to a length of 1,200 kilometers, and the 
 Tisza, Drava, Szava, navigable about to a length of 1,300 
 kilometers. 
 
 The Bega and the Ferencz Canals are the most important 
 canals of the land; a number of other canals are in the course 
 of construction, the most important being the canal connecting 
 the Danube with Fiume (Adria). 
 
 At the end of the year 1895 Hungary had 15,000 kilometers 
 of railways, with 2,200 locomotives, 4,500 railway cars for per- 
 sons and 50,000 cars for freight, 1,900 railway stations, and the 
 capital invested in these railways exceeded 900 million florins. 
 
 At that time there were in operation street railways running 
 about 200 kilometers, 45 of which were run by electric motive 
 and steam power, the rest being horse cars. 
 
 In the year 1895 Hungary had 4,500 post-offices, though 
 in 1868 she had only 1,400. What progress! The length of 
 the telegraph wires doing service in 1895 was 110,000 kilometers, 
 and I am exceedingly sorry not to be able to furnish later sta- 
 tistics. These would show the marvelous growth of the 
 country and conclusively prove my contention of the sound and 
 justified right of the Magyar people to be classed among the 
 foremost civilized nations of the European continent. 
 
72 Immigration Abuses 
 
 XVI 
 Emigration From Hungary 
 
 It was an English author who, about sixty years ago, said : 
 " The possible destiny of the United States of America as a 
 nation of one hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and 
 speaking the language of Shakespeare and Milton, is an august 
 conception." 
 
 Well, we are eighty million people to-day. The independ- 
 ence of this country was achieved by three million people. 
 
 The growth of the nation was, to a mighty powerful degree, 
 augmented by a salutary mixture of blood, but not enough to 
 impair the Anglo-Saxon ascendancy. The nation grew morally 
 strong from its original elements. The most vigorous scions 
 from all the European stocks came here to be made into a new 
 man, — not the Saxon, not the German, not the Gaul, not the 
 Helvetian, not the Norseman, not the Magyar, but the American. 
 
 They spread all over the land, from Maine to Florida, from 
 New York to California, they are united by the ballot-box, they 
 have one national will. One race supplies the wants of another's 
 and what is excessive in either is checked by the counteraction 
 of the rest. They willingly forget their foreign vernacular, and 
 the English-American tongue, the language of its laws, has be- 
 come the tongue of all. 
 
 Immigration has built up this country. 
 
 A large percentage of the distinction between different 
 branches of the Caucasian race is environment. Rear a boy of 
 German or' Italian blood under distinctly American surround- 
 ings, subjecting him wholly to American influences and teaching 
 him none but the English language, and he will be as distinctly 
 Amterican as any of his companions and friends. In this lies 
 
Immigration Abuses 73 
 
 the solution of the immigration problem. In this and in in- 
 telligence. 
 
 Assimilation neutralizes the, distinction of nationalities and 
 the product is American. The public schools, daily association 
 in business and social life, and finally intermarriage are the great 
 agencies which are developing true American men and women 
 from the various forces brought together in this country by the 
 converging streams of immigration from the ports of Europe. 
 
 The gravestones of almost every former republic warn us 
 that a high standard of moral rectitude as well as of intelligence 
 is quite as indispensable to communities and the nation at large, 
 as to individuals, if they would escape from either degeneracy 
 or disgrace. 
 
 These were the considerations, and to them must be added cer- 
 tain economic consideration, which prompted the United States 
 to pass the Immigration Laws now in force. 
 
 From what I said above it is readily seen that I am surely 
 not tainted with any " knownothingism." I believe in letting 
 the latch-string to our doors hang without. I believe in im- 
 migration. I admire the foreigner, who, of his own free will 
 and choice, exchanges his nationality and becomes an American 
 citizen. All I want of him is to be of good morals and to be 
 intelligent. What Heinrich Heine said, sarcastically, of the 
 United States, when he called America : " Der Spucknapf 
 Europas und der Freiheitsstall der neuen Welt," — The spittoon 
 of Europe and the new world's stable of liberty, — is untrue and 
 viciously false. 
 
 Unfortunately, this opinion still obtains in certain European 
 countries, and the United States Immigration Laws are on the 
 statute books just for the very purpose of preventing that mali- 
 cious remark from having even a semblance of justification. 
 
 That a nation like that of the Magyars loses yearly a per- 
 centage of its inhabitants by emigration is a very deplorable affair, 
 that this percentage is a very high one is simply awful. The 
 
74 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Magyar patriot has indeed reason to weep over the fate of his 
 country. The thousand-year-old country is being depopulated by 
 the new, modern " Volkerwanderung." 
 
 The first Magyar who came to the United States, who was 
 he ? I don't know. I know that the great German poet, Nickolaus 
 von Lenau, — by birth an Hungarian, — had been here in the thir- 
 ties ; I know that Frigyes Kerenyi, a tuneful poet of Hungary, a 
 friend of Petofi and of Tompa, came over here in the middle 
 of the forties and died here in 1852. I have found Magyar 
 colonists in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri; the gold-fever of Cali- 
 fornia brought not a few, the Hungarian revolution of 1848-49 
 caused the coming of a few hundred ; true, exiles and not bona fide 
 emigrants, but " the ice was broken," the influx of the Magyars 
 into the United States had begun. 
 
 The first traces of regular immigration from Hungary are 
 found in the early sixties. The great Civil War, then waging, 
 brought the ambitious sons of Mars, and a very large number of 
 Magyar names can be found among the enlisted men willing to 
 serve the country which had opened its hospitable doors to 
 Kossuth. Even the " adventurers," who, in civil wars, seem 
 to be what the shadow is to man — go with him — found it profit- 
 able to assume Magyar names, of course aristocratic ones : " Na- 
 dasys," " Esterhazys," " Utassys," " Naphegyis," " Almasys," and 
 so forth, though, in truth and in fact, they were frequently simply 
 " Sonnenscheins," " Kohns " and " Pollaks." 
 
 The industrial condition of the country during the war was 
 a great inducement for the Hungarian tradesman and manu- 
 facturer. They began to come in numbers. The distillery busi- 
 ness of New York, for instance, during the Andrew Johnson 
 administration, 1865-68, was almost exclusively in the hands of 
 Hungarian Jews, just as a few years later was the fur trade or 
 rather fur manufacturing. The boom in the oil fields of Penn- 
 sylvania was another strong inducement for Hungarian settlers, 
 and these again began the importation of the Hungarian laborers 
 
Immigration Abuses 75 
 
 into the coal regions. At that time, the very infancy of the period 
 of trade unions, a strike was crushed by the importation of hun- 
 dreds and thousands of Magyar Slovaks from the northern 
 counties of Hungary. 
 
 Statistical records are lacking as to the total number of im- 
 migrants who had arrived in this country from Hungary. Dur- 
 ing the years 1849-1867 Hungary was " non est " in the eyes 
 of the world. The incoming Hungarian was put down as an 
 Austrian. (Even after 1867 — when the Magyar constitution 
 was reestablished and her historic independence recognized, — 
 American officials preferred to call the Magyar an Austrian. 
 (The writer hereof in 1894 took out his " first paper " and " swore 
 off " his allegiance to the ruler of his native land : the " King 
 of Hungary," the officiating clerk of the court insisted on making 
 him swear off his allegiance to the " Emperor of Austria." 
 Writer hereof refused to be told by the clerk of the court 
 whose subject he, writer hereof, had been, and appealed to the 
 Court at Chambers to teach the clerk a little bit of political history 
 of Europe.) The Immigration authorities classified all comers 
 from Hungary as coming from " Austria-Hungary." It is safe 
 to assume, however, that fully fifty per cent, of immigrants 
 from " Austria-Hungary " were Hungarians, and that a goodly 
 percentage of them who could speak German were formerly put 
 down as " Germans." 
 
 In the various reports of the Commissioner General of Im- 
 migration at Washington, the immigration from " Austria- 
 Hungary " is given as follows : 
 
Immigration Abuses yy 
 
 the Ruthen, the Wallach, the Swab immigrant is a hardy son of 
 toil, peaceful, law-abiding, strong and healthy, the very best ma- 
 terial out of which splendid American citizenship is made. And 
 the proof of this assertion is not wanting. The Magyar and 
 Slovak immigrant of the former two and three decades had come 
 here with the single eye of establishing himself and to melt into 
 the great nation, simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self- 
 government and self-respect. In probably all of the States of 
 the Union the citizen of Hungarian origin stands high; legisla- 
 tors, judges, lawyers, physicians, knights of industry, farmers, 
 laborers, — good substantial citizens. 
 
 What happened then? 
 
 The Hungarian Government stood appalled. The loss of 
 her sons was keenly felt ; it threatened the very life of the nation. 
 Whole villages were depopulated, — and this is not a hollow 
 phrase, it is a trite, sad, sorrowful fact. Where to find a remedy ? 
 Instead of looking for this remedy from within: the enactment 
 of just and equitable laws, reduced taxation, establishment of 
 industrial, commercial and agricultural channels and highways 
 and interests, instead of reducing the burden of the people; in- 
 stead of making Magyarland being a land worth while to live for, 
 one also worth to die for : they " shifted." The government 
 said: Very well, let them emigrate after they have paid their 
 debt to the State and performed their military service, let them 
 go to America and learn there American ingenuity, American 
 industry, American labor-saving appliances, American spirit of 
 "Go ahead" opposed to our national: "hej, raeriink arra 
 meg!" ("Ah! there is lots of time!"), let them gather in 
 the American dollars, but let us continue our paternal ( ?) super- 
 vision. Let us prevent them from assimilating with the Ameri- 
 can people; let us prevent them from remaining there for good 
 and let us insist that their stay out there be but temporary; let 
 us insist that they, instead of becoming Hungarian-Americans, 
 remain American-Hungarians, let us edit for them their news- 
 
78 Immigration Abuses 
 
 papers; let us teach them by our own teachers and preachers; 
 let us continue our control over them ; and when they have earned 
 enough to pay off the mortgages on their farms and their debts 
 to the usurers, and have saved up enough to begin life anew, let 
 us receive them with open arms and kill the biblical fatted calf in 
 honor of their return. 
 
 And the Government of Hungary went about the accomplish- 
 ment of these purposes with a vengeance. 
 
 From a Hungarian standpoint, these purposes are pardon- 
 able, nay, are reasonable. 
 
 Of course, one ounce of prevention is better than any 
 amount of pounds of cure, and the government of Hungary 
 would have done better had it investigated the reasons of this 
 awful condition of affairs at home which drove hundreds of thou- 
 sands — a million or more — of its citizens from their native 
 heath. 
 
 Rotten political and economical conditions, corruption, are 
 the true causes. 
 
 During the last few years there resounded throughout 
 Hungary the Cassandra cry of warning; it was not heard. Re- 
 cently a pamphlet was published in Budapest, which illumines 
 the condition of affairs in Hungary with a remarkable insight, and 
 I can do no better than to translate, haec verba, the entire booklet. 
 
EMIGRATION MISERIES 
 
 LEGALIZED HUMAN BARTER 
 OPEN LETTER 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE 
 
 ON 
 
 MATTERS OF EMIGRATION 
 By G. Z. 
 
 Budapest, 1905 
 
Immigration Abuses it- 
 
 Parliament made good its own dereliction when in May 
 of the present year it delegated a committee to prepare the way 
 for a revision of the emigration laws which was passed one year 
 previously without debate. Such cold indifference did the fathers 
 of the country manifest toward it that one would have thought it 
 concerned the franchising of a vicinal railway, and not the remedy 
 of the country's most malignant evil. One part of the press had 
 done its full duty; it protested and agitated against the ordinances 
 planned in government circles, but its most fierce attacks were\ 
 all in vain. Count Stephen Tisza is one of those stubborn 
 statesmen who will disregard the best advice unless it emanates 
 from his own circle. 
 
 Owing to the narrow-mindedness of the minister-president 
 and the indolence of Parliament, it became possible to enact a law 
 which literally legalized the barter in human beings, while thet 
 orders promulgated by the Minister of Interior were instrumental 
 in raising the number of emigrants to an unparalleled height, and 
 made a monopoly of the business of turning over hundreds^ of 
 thousands of citizens to a mercenary syndicate. 
 
 As a consequence of these orders, which are still in force, 
 the freedom of choice is subjugated by force, while the hyenas of 
 emigration ply their nefarious business under official protection. 
 
 In its present form our emigration law is an offence in the 
 eyes of the civilized world. It reflects, not only on our sense 
 of justice, but upon our sense of decency. It furnishes an ex- 
 cuse to our enemies to question the unselfishness of our national 
 executive authority. 
 
 It was high time for our legislature to make this grievance 
 a subject of thorough investigation, and to change the lazv which 
 had opened wide the doors for arbitrariness and corruption. The 
 Parliamentary Committee has already commenced its delibera- 
 
82 Immigration Abuses 
 
 tions; it is to be feared, however, that owing to the present dis- 
 turbed state of political affairs, they will not be concluded soon. 
 This pamphlet is to serve a twofold purpose. In the firsi 
 place, to furnish information to the committee, and, in the second 
 place, to keep astir the public interest in emigration, which is 
 more vital than any other political matter. 
 
 The Emigration Law 
 
 Coloman Szell was guided by noble intentions when he pre- 
 pared the bill on emigration. His foremost idea was to reduce, 
 emigration, and he never for a moment thought that the enact-\ 
 ment of the law would provide for certain individuals a ricU, 
 source of revenue. And the Hungarian interest was before his 
 mind's eye then, too, when he wanted to entrust to a Hungarian 
 steamship company the transportation of Hungarian emigrants. 
 He wanted our fellow-citizens to sail across the ocean with the 
 Hungarian flag waving above them, among the crew that could 
 speak their own mother-tongue. The solicitousness extended so 
 far as to hold the company to sell transportation tickets at the 
 same price as foreign companies, which should entitle the pur- 
 chaser to free transportation home zvithin one year after date of 
 purchase. To our misfortune, Coloman Ssell had to go before his 
 plans were materialized, and the solution of the problem was left 
 to Stephen Tisza. 
 
 It is not my intention to cast suspicion upon the minister- 
 president, but I am compelled to state the positive fact that, aban- 
 doning the plan of his predecessor in office, in regard to a Hun- 
 garian steamship company, he manifested unseemly haste in sign- 
 ing a contract with a foreign country, the English Cunard Line. 
 While here at home the obstruction was in progress, and up im 
 Vienna the delegations were in session, Tisza drafted the Cunard 
 contract, and when the debates of the delegates were hottest, he 
 
Immigration Abuses 83 
 
 ordered Louis Levay, the Commissioner of Emigration, to sum- 
 mon by wire Moorhouse, Kuranda and Frankfurter, agents of the 
 Adria and Cunard lines to sign the contract. 
 
 Why that great haste? Could the Hungarian minister-presi- 
 dent not afford to wait until he returned to Budapest? 
 
 To this question only those could give a definite explanation 
 who know that other foreign compflnies did, and were about to 
 submit offers, perhaps more favorable than that of the Cunard 
 Line. It was, therefore, necessary to hurry the signing of the 
 contract, and by the " fait accompli " close the door to all further 
 competition. 
 
 I do not intend to throw it up to Count Tisza that in the 
 near past he was allied by the close enough ties of directorship 
 to the Adria, which is now associated with, and is the executive 
 agent of, the Cunard Line. I just mention it as a fact. And I 
 fTMst also mention the significant fact that soon after the signing 
 of the Cunard contract, done under " steam pressure," in Vienna, 
 in the midst of the delegation's session, Count Stephen Tisza ac- 
 quired for Mr. Emil Kuranda, the general director of the Adria, 
 the dignity of " Court Councillor." Mr. Kuranda is a deserving 
 man, a first-class authority on navigation matters, and, as an in- 
 dividual, worthy of distinction; but if he received the court coun- 
 sellorship as a reward for the Cunard contract. Count Stephen 
 Tisza is either the grossest ignoramus in judging of the value of 
 governmental contracts, or else he is the most cynical autocrat. 
 In its text of June, 1904, this contract is nothing less than an 
 attack against the decency of Hungary, and apt to arouse against 
 us the animosity of the United States. By this contract, Stephen 
 Tisza, in the name of the Hungarian Government, assumed the 
 responsibility to furnish to the Cunard Line thirty thousand emi- 
 grants annually. 
 
 If this is not barter in human lives, what is it? Is it proper, 
 is it permissible, for the government of a country ivhose sacred 
 duty it is to minimize emigration by every legal means, to stipulak 
 
84 Immigration Abuses 
 
 the number of emigrants for ten long years in advance? Is not 
 the suspicion justified, that a government, which is a party to such 
 a contract, is more inclined to secure the interest of the trans- 
 portation company, than to further the welfare of the country? 
 
 In this light it was looked upon by the outside world, and 
 most especially by the United States, and the storm of indignation 
 broke loose, when Marcus Braun, the immigration official, dele- 
 gated to Hungary — and of whom we will speak later — reported 
 to his government about this infamous contract. 
 
 We all know that this contract resulted in a mortification to 
 the Hungarian Government which is beyond expression. Owing 
 to the stand taken in this matter by the government of the Union, 
 it was compelled to change the contract, omitting the clause in 
 regard to the guaranteed number of emigrants. 
 
 In spite of these changes, however, the Adria, the Cunard 
 Line, and the Central Ticket Office, banded together to exploit 
 the emigration scheme, have done excellent business. The gov- 
 ernment, under Count Stephen Tisza, secured for them a mono- 
 poly. He delivered to them the whole population of the country, 
 to let them transport it to America. Of all the stipulations of 
 the emigrant law, none were realized but those tending to secure 
 the interests of the syndicate. 
 
 Thus he gave permission to the Central Ticket Office to 
 establish emigration agencies all over the country, giving them 
 exclusive rights for the sale of tickets. He ordered the adminis- 
 trative officials and gendarmes to give the "necessary aid" to 
 these agencies. To accelerate emigration, he empowered the ad- 
 ministrative officials of counties and the chiefs of police of cities 
 to issue passports. On top of it, and trampling under foot the 
 principle of individual freedom, he made it compulsory to emi- 
 grants to leave the country on the steamers of the Cunard Line, to 
 the exclusion of all other routes. 
 
 There never was a constitutional government which, with such 
 undisguised temerity, dared so to serve the interest of a private 
 
Immigration Abuses 85 
 
 contracting concern, entirely disregarding the indignation of the 
 outside world, and the disgusted public opinion of its own country. 
 
 While prior to Tisza's regime, one solitary firm, that of Miss- 
 ler, was trying clandestinely to secure passengers for the North 
 German Lloyd, thereafter the Central Ticket Office sent broad- 
 cast fifty to sixty agents, every one of them a hundred times more 
 dangerous than the secret agents of Missler, who, openly, and 
 with official sanction and aid, promote emigration. 
 
 Stephen Tisza may well be proud of his work. By means of 
 the triumvirate, Cunard-Adria-Central Ticket Office, he succeeded 
 in winning for Hungary the world's record — in emigration. 
 Since last year more people have left this country for America 
 than in any other year previously. But then, Stephen Tisza is 
 able to show results of his patriotic and beneficent exertions. 
 Central Ticket Office stocks are now quoted considerably higher! 
 
 And to Tisza, too, is due the nation's thanks for the blessed 
 fact that foreign agents and their clandestinely distributed emi- 
 gration pamphlets, no longer compose the ONLY source from 
 which our rural population is quenching its thirst for knowl- 
 edge as to American matters and emigration to America. 
 Stephen Tisza, like a good, painstaking Minister of the Interior, 
 provided that all ordinances pertaining to emigration should be 
 duly promulgated. In the villages all over the country the village- 
 crier can be heard ^ery month bringing to public notice the fact 
 that the privilege of selling steamship tickets to prospective emi- 
 grants has been revoked from Mr. So-and-so, and has been 
 awarded to Mr. So-and-so. By drumbeat, it is brought to public 
 notice to whom to turn for a passport. In short: Stephen Tisza 
 is looking out, in a fatherly manner, that the good people should' 
 not lose sight of America and of the ease with which one may 
 procure a passport and buy a ticket from an agency privileged by 
 the government. 
 
 I shall try to show later the manner in which the Central Ticket 
 Office uses the aid of the government, and hozv scandalously it 
 
86 Immigration Abuses 
 
 misuses the official, support. It would be impossible to skip over 
 that chapter. It is one of the most urgent tasks of the new regime 
 to put a sudden stop to these scandalous abuses. 
 
 At this place, I wish to call the attention of the Parliamentary 
 Committee to the fact that in the same proportion that Stephen 
 Tisza safeguarded the interest of the Cunard-Adria-Central Ticket 
 Office Association, he neglected to guard the interest of our poor 
 emigrants. 
 
 It is now more than a year and a half since the trains began 
 to carry thousands of emigrants to Fiume every week, yet no 
 building is provided where the people can decently be lodged 
 until the time of sailing. There is as yet no emigrant house in 
 Fiume, although the government has no right to direct the emigror 
 tion to the Hungarian port before such a house had been built and 
 made ready for use. The law made it obligatory to the govern- 
 ment to provide such a building. It was more important, however, 
 to Tisza, to play a rich source of revenue into the hands of the 
 Adria and the Central Ticket Office than to provide the most' 
 primitive means of comfort to our poor peasants and laborers. 
 
 I know that Count Stephen Tisza and Louis Levay, the un- 
 selfish apostles of emigration, will retort : " The Minister of 
 the Interior has long ago asked for public bids for the building 
 and maintenance of an emigrant home. The minister can't help 
 it if no one makes a bid." 
 
 Well, it is true, an advertisement was published in the news- 
 papers, but it is also true that the most impossible conditions were 
 attached to the same. Every one knows that Hungarian con- 
 tractors are greedy after any business chance offering ever so 
 small a profit, and, if there was no bid offered for the building 
 of the emigrant house, it was undoubtedly because the conditions 
 were absolutely unacceptable. But I would ask in return : Is it 
 right for the government to acquiesce to the fact that no offer 
 was made? Can Messrs. Tisza and Levay afford to look on with 
 stoic calmness and see how the Central Ticket Office is herding 
 
Immigration Abuses 87 
 
 our unfortunate emigrants in filthy, unsanitary sheds? Can they 
 suffer men, women and children, exhausted by the long and fa- 
 tiguing railway journey, to pass the night with the sky for a roof, 
 if but for one single night, subjecting them to drenching, catching 
 cold, and to diseases? 
 
 And this happened not once, not ten, but fifty times, until 
 one human representative of the City Council called the attention 
 of the mayor to the pitiful condition of these people, and asked 
 him to put a stop to it. This brought a little sense of honor to the 
 Central Ticket Office and the Adria S. S. Company, and they 
 hastened to put the poor, homeless emigrants, to whom comfort- 
 able lodging and good board was promised in the prospectuses, 
 under a roof. The emigrant house, however, is yet to be built. 
 
 Stephen Tisza could have compelled either the Adria^ the Cu- 
 nard Company, or the Central Ticket Office to build the home, but 
 his strong arm is weak when it must be raised against those td, 
 whom he is tied by the sweet memories of rich directorship divi- 
 dends. But if he really could not bear sufficient pressure upon the 
 fortunate managers of this emigration enterprise — which I posi- 
 tively deny — it would at least have been his duty to provide for 
 the emigrants by government means. 
 
 Is there no such appropriation in the budget of the Minister 
 of the Interior? For Heaven's sake, do not let us fool ourselves! 
 Count Tisza, the eminent financier, did not neglect to secure 
 by the passage of the emigration law, a certain income to — 
 let us say — the State. He fathered the ingenious and philan- 
 thropic idea of taxing the emigrant 10 crowns per capita. 
 
 The fact that this sum of 10 crowns is not collected by the 
 village secretary or by the gendarmes, but is collected by the 
 Central Ticket Office and included in the price of the ticket, and 
 thereafter is turned over to the Emigration Department of the 
 Ministry of the Interior, does not redeem any part of its revolting 
 and disgusting character. To prey upon homeless, exiled beggars 
 who sold everything they possessed to scrape together barely suf- 
 
88 Immigration Abuses 
 
 ficient money to bring them, to a place where they can earn a 
 living by liard and honest work, this characterizes most pregnantly 
 the feeling of Count Tissa and his satellites. But, of course, 
 they are looking out for the best of the country! The Govern- 
 ment, with a capital of one billion in its annual budget, able to 
 spend immense sums on racing prizes, on the increase of pensions 
 to played-out politicians, cannot spare a portion of the emigrants' 
 money to take care of their interest! 
 
 Let it be so, but I insist upon an answer to the ques- 
 tion: What has become of the tens of crowns collected thus far? 
 Since Tisza's order is in force, more than one hundred thousand 
 emigrants have left Hungary, and, consequently, more than a 
 million crowns went into the emigration fund. Where is the 
 money f Who is handling it? What is it used for? If it is still 
 intact, what is it intended for? 
 
 Decency demands a definite answer to these questions. The 
 sweat and the tears of our poorest people cleave to these tens of 
 crowns. It was inhuman to take that money, its reckless squan- 
 dering is a crime crying to heaven. However, I am convinced it 
 was not spent. It lies either in the Ministry of the Interior or in 
 the Government Treasury. I have not seen it in any inventory, 
 but it must be somewhere. And because it is not expended, I 
 ask, why does the Government neglect to have an emigrant house 
 built in Fiume with the money belonging to this fund? 
 
 I request the Parliamentary Committee not to leave the public 
 in darkness in regard to this odious detail of the emigration 
 matter. And let it also disclose whether, with this money, the 
 Tisza administration had re-patriated any of our emigrants from 
 America. 
 
 As mentioned in the prefacing lines, the present emigration 
 law is also the fault of the opposition party, for having neglected 
 to subject it to sound criticism and since its inception suffered it 
 without objection to make victims of our poor emigrants. THE 
 TEXT OF THE CONTRACT WITH THE CUNARD COM- 
 
Immigration Abuses 89 
 
 PANY HAS' NOT BEEN PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT 
 UP TO THE PRESENT DAY, and the knowledge obtained 
 by individual representatives of Parliament from publications of 
 ministerial ordinances shows only the fact that the sole beneficiary 
 of the movement, initiated with so much noise, is a monopoly for 
 the Central Ticket Office to recruit — and for the Cunard Com- 
 pany to transport — emigrants, and that a world-wide scandal is 
 attached to the history of the Hungarian emigration law, which 
 is likely to endanger seriously the situation of our countrymen 
 who should hereafter desire to emigrate to America. 
 
 The Case of Marcus Braun 
 
 / mentioned before that it was Mr. Braun who, last year, 
 disclosed the nature of the emigrant-delivering contract, made 
 between Stephen Tisza, party of the first part, and the Cunard 
 Company, party of the second part, to the Government of the 
 United States, and how the bill presented in the United States 
 Senate by Senator Lodge compelled Tisza to change the con- 
 tract. Up to that time the Prime Minister, as well as the officials 
 of the Emigration Department, had entertained the most cordial 
 relations and the most polite attitude toward Braun. None of 
 them had the slightest notion to find out whether, in his view, 
 Braun was a leading dancer at gentry balls or " kibic " (an on- 
 looker) at poker parties at the casino {which two vocations are 
 excellent recommendations with us at parnassum), or whether'- 
 he earned his bread as a mechanic. They were satisfied with the 
 fact that for the time being he was the official agent of the United 
 States, sent out on official business. 
 
 After the accident to the Cunard contract, Braun suddenly 
 became a disagreeable and dangerous fellow. Tisza became angry 
 at him, the Adria, the Cunard, the Central Ticket Office grew 
 inimical. 
 
90 Immigration Abuses 
 
 When, in April, the Minister of the Interior, through the 
 Austro-Hungarian Consul in New York, and the Adria and the 
 Central Ticket Office, through the Cunard Company, were ap- 
 prised that Mr. Braun was again sent to Hungary to ascertain the 
 causes of the abnormally increased emigration, a strong desire 
 for revenge was kindled in their hearts, not only for the dis- 
 comfiture of the previous year, but by their apprehensions that 
 the clear-sighted American emissary, so well acquainted with 
 our home conditions, will soon look through the most carefully 
 guarded secrets of the emigration business. 
 
 They were afraid the gentleman would cause them again a 
 great deal of annoyance, should he be able to secure concrete 
 data, annoyance to the administration, to the Cunard, to the Adria, 
 and to the Central Ticket Office. They were apprehensive that 
 against the reports submitted by him to his government, the 
 diplomacy of Ambassador Hengelmiiller in Washington, would 
 avail but little, if anything. 
 
 With such prospects in view, decency and the traditional 
 Hungarian chivalry (?) left but one path to the interested 
 parties: to eradicate every possible means by which the United 
 States official might accomplish his errand. Preparations were 
 made for his reception. The police hastily gathered all insinua- 
 tions and charges ever raised against Braun in foreign 
 lands, the warming up of which would likely reflect upon the 
 American emissary. The police did not care for the insignificant 
 fact that none of these charges were substantiated by legal 
 judgment, and consequently were legally non-existent. They 
 made of them a dossier, which, like a bomb, was to be thrown 
 in the face of Braun at the proper moment, and which was to 
 put a damper on his inclination for further sojourn in Hungary. 
 To furnish a legal excuse for the attack, the order was given 
 out to have him ostentatiously shadowed by detectives and to 
 have his letters opened. He luas bound to notice the proceeding, 
 to remonstrate against it, and then — out with the dossier. 
 
Immigration Abuses gi 
 
 The fine, ingenious and noble plan succeeded beyond ex- 
 pectation, all but the bomb-throwing. The bomb exploded back- 
 ward. The press, with rare unanimity, announced its condemn- 
 ing verdict over the unprecedented conduct, and denounced the 
 despicable weapons that have been used to besmirch the character 
 of an official delegate of a foreign government. 
 
 I believe that due satisfaction will be given to the United 
 States official. We should be discredited in the estimation of the 
 world, if it should be withheld for whatever reason. And we, 
 Hungarians, must take especial pains that no grudge should be 
 harbored against us by the United States. 
 
 What sort of report Mr. Braun will this time submit to the 
 Immigration Department at Washington, I do not know. But if 
 he has gained personal knowledge of the means, how, under 
 government protection, the Central Ticket Office is — in con- 
 sideration of a big commission — procuring passengers for the Cu- 
 nard Line; if, by personal observation, he has acquainted himself 
 with the treatment afforded to emigrants, I am afraid that the 
 United States Government, through its Legislature, will place 
 great obstacles in the way of Hungarian immigration. 
 
 Lest this should happen, zve must, here at home, stop the 
 greedy abuses of the Central Ticket Office. How to do this, I 
 will try to outline in a fezv rough sketches. 
 
 The Bossing of the Central Ticket Office 
 
 Based upon the contract entered into by the Tisza adminis- 
 tration on one hand, and the Cunard-Adria Steamship Com- 
 panies on the other hand, the sale of steamship tickets 
 became the exclusive monopoly of the Central Ticket Office. 
 It is agreed that the Central Ticket Office shall receive from 
 the Cunard Company a commission amounting to twenty crowns 
 per capita. 
 
92 Immigration Abuses 
 
 This is a fact which cannot be disputed. This being the 
 agreement, it does not need to be proven that the matter of emi- 
 gration has become a business, and, therefore, is ipso facto placed 
 on an immoral and dangerous basis. It is obviously to the inter- 
 est of the Central Ticket Office to increase the total sum of its 
 commissions, A GOAL WHICH CANNOT BE REACHED 
 EXCEPT BY THE INCREASE OF EMIGRATION. 
 
 We are compelled to admit that the Central Ticket Office 
 has evinced great liveliness in the advancement of its business 
 interests. It acquired a ministerial license for its country branch 
 offices, to enable its managers to act as emigration officials, while 
 it is true that the ministerial order prescribes that only duly ap- 
 pointed officials, drawing a fixed annual salary from the gov- 
 ernment, should act as emigration officers, and that the same 
 order makes it illegal to give any commission to such officials; 
 it is true, nevertheless, that the country representatives of the 
 Central Ticket Office receive from five to eight crowns per capita 
 in excess of their salary. Count Stephan Tisza denied this in 
 Parliament, but it would be very easy to prove that he was mis- 
 taken, either by depositions taken from country representatives 
 under oath or by an examination of the books of the Central 
 Ticket Office. 
 
 The most simple common sense will tell Count Tisza that no 
 country representatives will send agents to the villages and rail- 
 way stations, if such extra activity would bring no extra re- 
 muneration. It is obvious that this remuneration cannot be fixed 
 uniformly, but has to be proportioned to the extent of the result 
 of such extra activity. In other words, a remuneration per capita. 
 That this is really so is best proven by the extraordinary energy 
 manifested by sub-agents and by the convulsive clutch of the 
 Central Ticket Office whenever they catch hold of an emigrant. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the emigration law prohibits the distri- 
 bution of any sort of document relating to emigration; does not 
 even permit the newspapers to publish the advertisements of for- 
 
Immigration Abuses 93 
 
 eign steamship companies and their agents; yet the Central Ticket 
 Office has flooded the villages with emigration literature. The 
 emigration agents and sub-agents, freely discuss emigration with 
 their clients, not within the office, but in the -villages. The 
 village secretary, the Justice of the Peace, the Judge, all wink 
 their eyes, pretend to see nothing, because — such is the minis- 
 terial order; there it is in black and white — " to afford suitable 
 aid to authorized emigration agents. 
 
 This high administrative aid and support made some of the 
 commission-hungry officials so reckless, indeed, that they literally 
 incite and persuade people to emigrate. Luckily, there happened 
 to be a county judge who, disgusted by the scandalous proceed- 
 ings, submitted an energetic report to the minister, causing the 
 revocation of the license from such over-zealous workers. 
 
 The Central Ticket Office, however, did not content itself 
 with a salvus conductus for its agents all over the country, but 
 they also besieged all frontier railway stations, and those of the 
 capital city, to catch hold of all those who tried to go to America 
 on a ticket purchased elsewhere. 
 
 If the Parliamentary Committee will take the trouble to read 
 the newspapers from last spring up to the present summer, 
 they will be amazed to find how many hundreds of people have 
 preferred charges not only against the autocratic tyranny of the 
 Central Ticket Office, but also against administrative officials. 
 Csacza (a frontier station), especially, was the scene of scandal- 
 ous atrocities. The Catholic priest of the place, over his full sig- 
 nature, published an indignant statement in one of the Budapest 
 newspapers, stating that the Central Ticket Office cross-exam- 
 ines every third-class railway passenger as to his intended place 
 of destination, compels him, by the aid of gendarmes, even 
 if in possession of a ticket to Hamburg or Bremen, to 
 travel via Fiume on the steamers of the Cunard Company. 
 The poor Slav or Ruthen peasant will in vain produce his pass- 
 port; his protestations that he is obliged to travel with the least 
 
94 Immigration Abuses 
 
 possible loss of time will avail nothing; the beagles of the Central 
 Ticket Office, to secure the paltry commission of a few crowns, 
 will compel the poor, unfortunate fellow to lose the price of his 
 railway ticket, to forfeit the advance on his steamship ticket, and 
 will force him to travel to Fiume where, oftentimes, he must 
 wait a fortnight before a Cunard steamer sails to New York. 
 
 And it is not only in frontier towns that the Central Ticket 
 Office dares to tyrannize the passengers, but in the very 
 capital. From early morning till late at night the gaudily dressed 
 agents are watching for prospective emigrants. No sooner will 
 the traveler approach the ticket agenfs window, the spy, dressed in 
 admiral's uniform, will motion to the policeman or detective, who 
 will presently take the passenger under cross-examination. 
 
 Has he a passport? Where does he go? How will he prove 
 that he really wished to go to Vienna and not to Am,erica? 
 
 One question follows the other in quick succession, and the 
 cornered traveler's protestations that he has a right to travel via 
 Germany, having a valid legal passport, are all good for nothing. 
 The Central Ticket Office agent tells him that he must either 
 buy a ticket via Fiume from him or else he will be sent back 
 under police escort to his village. It happened more than once 
 that tickets sent to peasant women by their husbands living in 
 America, have simply been confiscated and the women were told 
 to either get money wherewith to purchase a ticket via Fiume, or 
 else stay at home. We know of instances in which persons swore 
 by everything that was holy and dear to them, that they did not 
 intend to emigrate to America, that they wanted to go to Austria 
 only, yet they were retained in the capital for days, until they 
 succeeded in proving that they really did not intend to emigrate. 
 
 As often as a charge was made against this inquisition method 
 — which happened quite frequently — the Central Ticket Office 
 had the stereotyped excuse to offer that its "stern and conscien- 
 tious " proceeding is necessary in the interest of the country, as 
 otherwise it would not be able to turn over to the emigration fund 
 
Immigration Abuses 95 
 
 the stipulated ten crowns per capita. With this purpose in view, 
 it must have a license to disrobe and search the pockets of 
 every third-class passenger, else the emigration fund will lose 
 ten crowns. It is hardly necessary to characterize this stupid 
 excuse. It is true that the emigration fund gets ten crowns per 
 head, but the Central Ticket Office gets twice as much, twenty 
 crowns. It is also a very urgent matter to reconsider whether 
 it is correct, or just, or human, to continue the collection of this 
 tax of ten crowns. Whether, over there in America, they will 
 not be justified in suspecting that it is really in the interest of 
 the country to increase emigration, since it derives a revenue out 
 of it. I am informed that it is already made a topic of discussion. 
 Of course, in the Ministry of the Interior, they will derisively 
 smile at this, and will point to the Italian emigration law, which 
 replenishes its emigration fund by the same method. Now this 
 is true, but you will please, gentlemen, remember that the Italian 
 emigration law contains many good points, too, and most espe- 
 cially it does not permit human barter under government protec- 
 tion. Our law was modelled exactly after the Italian law, with the 
 difference that only its obnoxious and baneful points have been 
 adopted — among others, the ten crowns per capita tax — while 
 everything that was good and beneficent in it had been omitted. 
 It ought to have been taken into consideration also that the con- 
 ditions in Italy are different from ours. Here, only one point was 
 considered: The emigration from our country is heavy, let us' 
 make it profitable. And they did make it profitable. But I would 
 stake my life on it that if Coloman Szell had remained Prime 
 Minister, the only one who would have profited by this law would 
 have been the emigrant and, indirectly, therefore, the nation. Had 
 he seen that this tax is giving rise to misunderstanding and abiise, 
 that it furnishes legal rights to a private enterprise to cross-exam- 
 ine and search the pockets of people, Coloman Szell would have 
 been the first man to recognize the mistake and repeal the law. 
 As long as the way over Fiume was made obligatory to emi- 
 
9^ Immigration Abuses 
 
 grants, there was a shadow of justification for the existence of 
 the Central Ticket Office. Later, however, when the order was 
 issued that emigrants should be permitted to choose their port of 
 departure, the Central Ticket Office continued its atrocities. The 
 explanation is self-evident. The Central Ticket Office owes its 
 existence to the Cunard-Adria Company. It will, therefore, con- 
 tinue to exert itself in behalf of it, and will do its utmost to direct 
 emigration via Fiume. 
 
 The gratitude of the Central Ticket Office is comprehensible. 
 But what is the reason that moves Stephen Tisza to lend aid and 
 support to the Cunard Company to the very point of autocracy? 
 
 We glean from statistical data, that coercive measures in favor 
 of the Fiume direction, notwithstanding, and in spite of the 
 arbitrary agitation of the government-protected Central Ticket 
 Office, more than sixty thousand Hungarian passengers have 
 sailed from German ports. Stephen Tisza blames this result on 
 the pernicious activity of German secret agents. I arrive at a 
 different conclusion, namely, that it is all in vain for us to try 
 forcing the Fiume line, because it does not answer the purpose 
 of our emigrants. 
 
 It is a commonly known fact that in the beginning of 1904 
 Tisza permitted that, contrary to that particular section of the law 
 which required that our emigrants should board the steamers in 
 Fiume, under the supervision of Hungarian Government officials, 
 our countrymen, sent to Fiume by force, were transported by rail 
 to Antwerp and thence by steamer to Liverpool. This horrible 
 abuse lasted for months, and its discontinuance was brought about 
 not by the intervention of the Hungarian Government, but by a 
 protest coming from America. 
 
 We also know that when the Cunard Company had made up 
 with the trust, Tisza issued an order to the effect that thereafter 
 emigrants should be permitted to choose their own port, provid- 
 ing, however, that the ticket must be purchased by the Central 
 Ticket Office. Naturally, the bulk of the passengers selected the 
 
Immigration Abuses gy 
 
 shorter route, while the Cunard Line had hardly a few hundred 
 passengers to carry. As a matter of fact, this ought to have been 
 of no concern at all to Tisza, since the Hungarian Government 
 could not be expected to care for the business of a private enter- 
 prise; but when the Cunard Company made confidential com- 
 plaints to Tisza, he at once issued an order that the route via 
 Bremen or Hamburg was to be permitted only when there was 
 not sufficient room on Cunard steamers. 
 
 It is obvious that a father could not have cared more tenderly 
 for his child than Tisza did for the Cunard. Another prime min- 
 ister might have felt some reluctance to expose himself so unre- 
 strainedly in the interest of a foreign stock company. Count 
 Stephen Tisza, however, does not suffer from supersensitiveness 
 or shyness. 
 
 His " good nature " carried him even still further. At the 
 end of May last he issued the strict ukase that thereafter it shall 
 not be permitted to travel by any other route except via Fiume. 
 
 What I would now like to know is this. If it was compatible 
 with the law to prevent for five months a small number of emi- 
 grants to emigrate via German ports, why was it now necessary 
 to raise a bar against those ports? Was there any trouble on 
 account of lodging, boarding or treatment? Not at all. The 
 motive for this order is to be found simply in the natural desire 
 of the Cunard Company to get the whole loaf of transportation 
 business, and in this endeavor the company found in Count Ste- 
 phen Tisza a willing and devoted sttpporter — I came very near 
 saying servant. 
 
 Over in America, they watch with peculiar interest Hungarian 
 matters, and is it to be wondered at that the shrewd Yankee 
 can find no explanation for the reason why one in high 
 official position should lend his official influence to a private 
 enterprise, and whether he be moved solely by a sense of Platonic 
 affection? 
 
 I am aware that the boasting and phrasy patriot will feel 
 
9^ Immigration Abuses 
 
 shocked by this statement, but justice stands above patriotic 
 phrases. I yield to none in my ardent desire to see our Hungarian 
 port prosper materially, but it is impossible not to notice the un- 
 fortunate geographical location of that port for the transporta- 
 tion of our emigrants. 
 
 The trips from Fiume to New York consume from eighteen 
 to twenty days, while even a slow passenger steamer from a 
 German port will make the trip in eight to ten days. From Fiume 
 steamers sail once in a fortnight, while from German ports steam- 
 ers sail every week. These are differences which chauvinism can- 
 not overcome. Leaving it altogether out of consideration that it 
 is unjust to coerce a free citizen to take a certain route, humanity 
 requires that our poor people should be subjected to the least 
 possible hardships. To spend eighteen to twenty days on the ocean 
 instead of ten, is a hardship even to those who are used to the 
 ocean and are traveling in comfortable berths, and not squeezed 
 together in the steerage like our poor emigrants, none of whom 
 has ever before seen the ocean. 
 
 The liBerty of our citizens, as well as humane consideration, 
 demand that coercion in favor of the Fiume direction should 
 cease. The government has no right to interfere in the matter 
 of the choice of a port, as long as the right to emigrate, that is 
 the passport, has been acquired. The excuse in favor of Fiume, 
 that^ on account of stricter medical examination, the possibility of 
 deportation on the ground of physical disability would be mini- 
 mized, is lame, since the German steamship companies adhere just 
 as strictly to the requirements of the American immigration laws, 
 and are willing to comply strictly with ours. 
 
 Let those travel via Fiume who prefer a twenty-day trip. 
 There will be few, indeed, who zvill prefer it, but then the Cunard 
 Company is at liberty to offer inducements to the traveling public, 
 and if, notwithstanding such inducements, there would not be pas- 
 sengers enough, why, let her discontinue the sailings. We cannot 
 permit our administrative officials to use arbitrary means in coerc- 
 ing our citizens in behalf of a private concern. 
 
Immigration Abuses 99 
 
 From the standpoint of the country, I know of not one reason 
 in favor of the Fiume line. On the very day when the German 
 steamship companies declared their willingness to comply with 
 every provision of our emigration lazv, the justification for the 
 existence of the Fiume-New York line became nil. It was brought 
 about as a weapon against the foreign countries. When they had 
 surrendered unconditionally, there was no further need for dis- 
 criminating methods. 
 
 No matter how much averse we might be to enrich foreign 
 companies with the money of Hungarian emigrants, a glance at 
 the map will convince us that the shortest road to America from 
 Hungary leads through German ports. Our people are now suffi- 
 ciently civilized to judge for themselves which way they can travel 
 quickest and most comfortably. From this natural route they can 
 be made to turn only by force. It is wrong, however, to use force 
 in a civilized commonwealth, when there is not an atom of justi- 
 fication for the use of force. There is hardly a single person in 
 our broad land but would earnestly wish that Fiume should be 
 the port of departure to America. It would be superfluous to en- 
 large upon the great economical importance for Fiume and the 
 country at large. But, if we must insist upon the Fiume direction 
 at all hazards, let us offer to a steamship company inducements 
 in money, not in human lives. If we can afford to pay annually 
 a million and a half to secure ships for the transportation of 
 our export articles, why should we be reluctant to bring a sacrifice 
 of money when not flour and sugar, but human lives, come into 
 consideration? We either want regular sailings between Fiume 
 and New York, or we don't want them. It seems at present as 
 though we did. Let us then turn from the road we have hitherto 
 trodden, let us admit that we were mistaken, that it is vicious to 
 guarantee annually thirty thousand lives, and let us, instead, guar- 
 antee thirty, or a hundred thousand florins. The former is reck- 
 less and atrocious, the other is the only legitimate move to keep 
 up the Fiume direction. 
 
100 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Should Count Stephen Tisza remain at the helm of the ad- 
 ministration, we should have to expect that he would retain the 
 present unjust conditions and would permit the robberies of the 
 Central Ticket Office for another nine years. Fortunately, we 
 have strong hopes that our political changes will result in a change 
 of administration. We trust that by the time the Parliamentary 
 Committee will conclude its investigation and will submit to Par- 
 liament its propositions for the revision of the emigration law, the 
 coming constitutional government will relieve the country of the 
 emigration monopolists. 
 
 It is true that the contract signed by Tisza, in the name of 
 the country, binds it for ten years {breakable by either party only 
 after a lapse of five years), but this ought to constitute no bar' 
 against the cessation of the present miseries. Should the Cunard 
 Company decide to stick by the contract, it would be easy to find 
 means that would effectually cure them of their attachment to it. 
 
 It is a safe bet that, should the license be revoked, the country 
 agents and police and gendarmes should cease coercing the people 
 to travel via Fiume; the Cunard steamers would soon sail without 
 steerage passengers. But nobody desires that the Cunard Com- 
 pany, which has assumed heavy responsibilities, and taken a great 
 risk, and which thus far has complied with its own end of duties 
 tolerably well, should be made to remember with bitterness its 
 connection with Hungary. We must, therefore, find a modus 
 whereby this odious contract can be broken, to the WMtual satis- 
 faction of both the Cunard Company and the Hungarian emi- 
 grants. Should this prove impossible, it will be timely to demon- 
 strate that the weal of our own people is paramount to the interest 
 of a foreign stock company. One circumstance, however, is be- 
 yond the pale of deliberation. This is the revocation of the con- 
 cession to the Central Ticket Office, and the stopping of business 
 activity of emigrant agents. 
 
 In conclusion, one thing more: ever since the machinations 
 of the Central Ticket Office and its agents have become the topic 
 
Immigration Abuses loi 
 
 of public discussion and public indignation, many people have 
 given utterance to their amazement that blameless gentlemen and 
 patriots like Count Joseph Hunyadi, Count Stephan Szechenyi 
 and Count Anton Sigray have continued as directors. Should it 
 be possible that these men identified themselves with the heartless 
 Central Ticket Office, and its still more heartless agents? 
 
 I am perfectly satisfied that nothing can be farther removed 
 from the minds of the above named gentlemen than the thought 
 to cover, with their great reputation, the shady practices of the 
 Central Ticket Office. It is rumored that the managers of the 
 Central Ticket office trust, that the illustrious names of its direc- 
 tors, their political influence, and social weight, will serve as a 
 shield against the Parliamentary Committee. We have not the 
 slightest doubt that the committee will go about its work without 
 bias or prejudice, without regard to personal worth or influence; 
 yet, it would be the correct thing for the gentlemen to relinquish 
 their places in the directory now, thereby removing the shadow of 
 a doubt that the Parliamentary Committee would be swayed in its 
 findings by the personnel of the directory. 
 
 XVII 
 Governmental Rudeness 
 
 This is a dark picture, but it is less dark than the condition 
 of affairs really is. 
 
 I speak with no bitterness. I have forgiven and forgotten. 
 I am now only doing what my duty is, as I see it in the sight 
 of God and men. Hungarian immigrants have a right to come 
 here, they are welcome, as are the down-trodden from all corners 
 of the earth who are induced to come here because of our great- 
 
102 Immigration Abuses 
 
 ness and wealth and the key of opportunity we put into the hands 
 of all comers, because of our spreading out our protecting wing 
 over all, because of our dealing out equal justice to all, because of 
 our inspiring all with the spirit of glorious American citizenship. 
 
 But we protest against the coming of immigrants who regard 
 their stay here, in our midst, only as temporary. No foreign 
 government has the right to create " a state within the state " or 
 establish colonies, and attempt to make the immigrant continue 
 his allegiance to it. Among others, the Hungarian government 
 is doing this and is doing it systematically, continuously and de- 
 liberately. 
 
 Some Hungarian and Slovak newspapers published in 
 America are subsidized, the churches and schools are provided 
 for with ministers and teachers from home, Hungarian books are 
 freely distributed by the thousand, Hungarian dignitaries of the 
 Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Protestant Churches come 
 on visits, — not exclusively pastoral — and they preach " Magyar 
 patriotism" against "expatriation" and falHng away from 
 " home " ; artificial enthusiasm is attempted to be aroused by 
 sending over "national flags"; the whole trend of Magyar 
 literature is directed towards the one great end: to prevent the 
 Hungarian immigrant from becoming an American citizen and to 
 induce him to consider his life in America only a " makeshift," — 
 temporary. 
 
 To illustrate this, let me print here only one of the many 
 " patriotic " poems written by Magyar poets and dedicated to the 
 Hungarians in America. The author of this poem is not one 
 of the hundred and more conventional versifiers, such as all 
 countries possess, but is Emil Abranyi, one of the greatest modern 
 poets of Hungary of to-day. The translation is taken from those 
 of Mr. Wm. N. Loew, the well known poet-translator, who has 
 done more than any one else, and has done it more successfully, to 
 make the beauties of Magyar poetic literature known to English 
 American students and readers. 
 
Immigration Abuses ' 103 
 
 TO THE AMERICAN HUNGARIANS 
 
 Nos patriam fugimus, 
 Emil AbrAnyi. 
 Migrating birds go to a richer clime 
 
 When valley, grove and field begin to fade 
 However, with the first smile of springtime 
 
 They come back to the orphaned nest they made. 
 They all return, the distance though be great. 
 
 Naught keeps from its beloved nest the bird, 
 Here is, my friends, a course to imitate. 
 
 Who have your home to other lands transferred. 
 
 Well ! emigrate if your own Magyar land. 
 
 Because she is so poor, supports you not; 
 Seek fortunes, while to work with brain and hand 
 
 In factory, or mine's depths be your lot. 
 But when good fortune smiles upon you there, 
 
 Abundance comes to you who rich have grown; 
 Come back into your native land and share 
 
 With our dear fatherland the wealth you own. 
 
 Live thus in your new home, though far away, 
 
 During your exile's dreary, dismal years. 
 That on the Magyar name you, day by day. 
 
 But honor cast, the world our race reveres. 
 We had enough of party strife and fight, 
 
 Of envy, hatred, vengeance and things mean : 
 Though midst of strangers be, Magyars unite ! 
 
 Be truer patriots than we have been. 
 
 Work, work with zeal ! all honest efforts steel 
 
 Your strength, endow the heart, improve the mind ! 
 For not an hour though forget to feel 
 
 How small the number is you've left behind. 
 Count us, few Magyars left, with zealous care 
 
 As a poor widow counts her last few pence. 
 Oh! don't exile yourselves! This is our prayer. 
 
 Don't make our beggar-state still more intense. 
 
 'Tis true, the Niagara has no peer, 
 
 It is of all the waters' thundrous head. 
 Yet thousand times more pleased I am to hear 
 
 The brooklet Tar's sweet murmuring instead. 
 No Red River can be so dear to me 
 
 As tiny Bodrog and its reed-grown shore, 
 For this I'd long, forever long to see 
 
 My beauteous Magyarland which I adore. 
 
104 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Migrating eagles, who have built your nest 
 
 Out there on proud, rich cities' mighty walls. 
 If rude foe would our nation's life molest 
 
 Would you remain away when duty calls? 
 No, no ! I know, with eager zeal you'd heed 
 
 The nation's call, and you will cross the seas 
 To join your brethren here, to fight, to bleed. 
 
 To die for Magyarland's sweet liberties ! 
 
 Long before I have had the honor of being appointed to the 
 office I until recently held, I had noticed this policy of the Hun- 
 garian government and " not because I love Caesar less, but Rome 
 more" — I condemned it, and I went about counteracting it. 
 I did so in print and speech. I insisted that the Magyar immigrant 
 should see his duty, and become Americanized, in truth and in fact ; 
 in spirit pure and unselfish to be proud to be able to say : " Civis 
 americanus sum." I preached and I lectured and I published 
 everywhere where two or three Hungarians were gathered 
 together the gospel of Americanism. I organized societies teach- 
 ing them the language of the country, the laws of the country; 
 to enable them to acquire the citizenship of the country, I organ-, 
 ized them into political bodies. 
 
 Of course, I fell from grace, — in the eyes of the representa- 
 tives of the government of Hungary I was a black sheep. Dur- 
 ing the early years of my life in the United States I was " all- 
 right." When Hungary celebrated the thousandth year of her 
 historic existence I was good enough to be designated as the 
 " Press Agent " of that historic undertaking in America, and I 
 dare say I did my work well. Few years before I had occupied 
 a responsible position at the Chicago World's Fair, where I suc- 
 ceeded in driving the then Austro-Hungarian Consul-General of 
 New York from the office which he had prostituted. 
 
 I was instrumental in securing the recall of another Austro- 
 Hungarian Consul-General in New York, whose hypocrisy I 
 laid bare. That man had the unmitigated cheek to go to a the- 
 atrical performance — operetta — on the very day when all of 
 
Immigration Abuses 105 
 
 the civilized world stood aghast at the awful death — by the 
 anarchist's dagger — of his Empress-Queen, Elizabeth, for which 
 he had a few hours before ordered the flag of the consulate to be 
 on the half-mast, and the Emperor-King had ordered official 
 mourning. 
 
 I published a newspaper, I lived in the very lime-light of my 
 countrymen, I had joined any number of societies — never, abso- 
 lutely never had even a breath of suspicion been breathed against 
 my character. I continued the even tenor of my ways, I lived 
 peaceably, quietly, and I did my work. I married; my wedding 
 trip took me to my native country. From my native country I 
 had received my " discharge papers," that is to say, upon my be- 
 coming an American citizen I petitioned the Hungarian Govern- 
 ment to free me from all obligations I might be under as a Hun- 
 garian. The petition was granted and I was given a certificate 
 of character, that I had performed all of my political and civic 
 duties, that there are no complaints of any kind or nature pending 
 against me, be they before the criminal or before the civil author- 
 ities, that my record at home is absolutely clean. 
 
 Then I went to Hungary in my capacity as Special Agent of 
 the Immigration Bureau of the Department of Commerce and 
 Labor at Washington. In Budapest, Hungary, I was received, 
 well, almost with open arms. I was feasted and feted, flattered, 
 made a great deal of. I had audiences with the Minister-Presi- 
 dent and other Ministers, with leaders of political parties, with 
 Members of Parliament, Directors of Banks and Presidents of 
 Railroads. 
 
 Never a breath of suspicion of an accusation of any kind or 
 nature was made ; if anything, the Hungarians seemed to be proud 
 that one of their nationality should be entrusted with an import- 
 ant mission by the Washington authorities. 
 
 I had been sent to Hungary, however, not to bask myself in 
 the sunshine of ministerial and political greatness; I had been 
 sent to do a certain work, to do it conscientiously and faithfully. 
 
io6 Immigration Abuses 
 
 Well, without fear of being charged with vanity or conceit, I did 
 my work con amore, and I think I did it well. The Depart- 
 ment of Commerce and Labor in Washington has my report. 
 
 That report of mine opened the eyes of the Department to 
 the true condition of affairs in re Hungarian immigration. 
 That report belongs now to the world, and without further com- 
 ment, suffice to say, that I did prove that the most ulcerous spot 
 on the body politic of Hungary is her " emigration " into foreign 
 countries, that is to say, to the United States, because only a most 
 insignificant decimal of percentage emigrate to other lands. 
 
 That report, however, it seems, became known to the Gov- 
 ernment Officials of Hungary, while it was kept here a secret for 
 over a year. It is hardly credible, but it cannot be gainsaid, the 
 Government officials of Hungary were in complete possession of 
 all the data that I had gathered and furnished to my own Gov- 
 ernment. ■ 
 
 I had become a dangerous man. They decided that I must 
 be annihilated as an investigator of emigration abuses in Hungary 
 and they went about in truly chivalresque, — no! in truly cow- 
 ardly, cut-throat manner. 
 
 Fully appreciating the responsibility which it involves and 
 which I assume, I charge Count Stephen Tisza, until recently 
 Prime Minister of Hungary, his State Councilor Mr. Alexander 
 Selley, the Hungarian Commissioner of Emigration Mr. Ludwig 
 Levai and the Chief of Police of Budapest, Mr. Bela Rudnay, to 
 have concocted the dastardly scheme which they proceeded to 
 carry out and which in miserability and brutality would do honor 
 to the corrupt police officials of Louis XIV. of France or of one 
 of the Italian Princes of the Mediaeval Ages. 
 
 I was to be discredited. I was to be " unmasked." I was 
 to be annihilated. 
 
 " Wie der Schelm ist, so denkt er," and the corrupt Magyar 
 officials, unable to elevate themselves to the height of a man 
 doing his duty faithfully, imagined and judged — from their own 
 
Immigration Abuses 107 
 
 standard — that I, who had laid bare their corrupt practices, 
 must have done so because of my being in the secret service of 
 the International Mercantile Marine Company, — the Steamship 
 Trust, but particularly in the service of the two German lines, — 
 and thought I was bent to do as much harm as possible to the 
 Cunard S. S. Company, which was not or is not in the said Trust. 
 It was decided that my mail should be opened, believing to find 
 in the letters by me received, instructions about my future steps 
 and actions. Their plan was to pounce upon me when read- 
 ing this incriminating letter, find it in my hands or on my body, 
 and visiting on me the penalties of their own laws, to expel me 
 from Magyar territory. Of course, they were also to send a stiff 
 letter of protest to Washington reproaching the United States 
 Government for daring to send such a man as Marcus Braun to 
 their country, — and thus to disgrace me forever. Well, from 
 petty larceny to grand larceny is but a tiny step — it was decided 
 that if nothing incriminating were found in my correspondence, 
 there should be something smuggled into it anyhow and I be 
 crushed at all hazards. 
 
 Well, " the thing did not work," — within 24 hours after my 
 arrival, I had been put in possession of their scheme. I knew 
 that I am shadowed by detectives. I knew, for instance, at 12 
 o'clock noon, that at 3 or 4 in the afternoon I'll receive a letter 
 from my good wife, which was then being read at Police Head- 
 quarters and which letter had arrived with the morning mail. I 
 had better detectives, more faithful ones, more truthful ones and 
 cleverer ones than the Hungarian Government had. I knew their 
 game steeped in infamy, even trying to entangle me in the meshes 
 of a midnight nymph in their service and their pay. Horrible! 
 A government of a civilized country by its lawfully constituted 
 agents the particeps criminis in a badger game ! 
 
 I went ahead, did my work, gathered up evidence and re- 
 fused to be caught in any of their traps. 
 
 They grew bolder and bolder and finally, on May 8th, 1905, 
 
io8 Immigration Abuses 
 
 I caught their famous detective red-handed in the act of pulling 
 out my mail from the mail-box, near the porter's lodge of the 
 Grand Hotel Hungaria, and I did, what I beUeve any and every 
 other American would have done, and gave vent — in unmistak- 
 able terms, — to my feelings. The police, denying most strenu- 
 ously ever having touched my mail, summoned me to the Police 
 Captaincy of the district where the incident had happened, and I 
 was fined 50 crowns. At the trial, the detective, in terms most 
 earnest and solemn ( ?), denied ever having touched my mail. 
 
 Councillor Selley and Chief Rudnay made the same strenuous 
 denials before the United States Consul General, Dr. Frank Dyer 
 Chester, but when they found that the evidence in my possession 
 was absolutely convincing and that the most solemn denials only 
 convicted them of perjury, they changed their position. They did 
 what ? They claimed : " Marcus Braun is — as we are told — a 
 former criminal, has a criminal record, we were justified in having 
 him watched, safety to society compelled us to know with whom 
 he is corresponding and what his correspondence ! " 
 
 You, Hungarian-American, you American gentlemen who 
 read these pages will feel a chill of horror pass through you on 
 reading these lines and you will ask yourself whether I am telling 
 you the truth, whether such things could happen in these happy 
 days of Anno Domini 1905 in a country claiming to be enrolled 
 as a civilized one in the galaxy of nations. And yet, this is the 
 truth. It so happened. 
 
 What did they care, — they, the Hungarian Government, — 
 whose representatives had but few years ago given me a certificate 
 of good character: that I had done faithful military service, that 
 I had a good moral character against which no accusations have 
 been made before civil or criminal courts, — what did they care, 
 the representatives of the Hungarian Government who had ap- 
 pointed me to be their Press Agent throughout the United States 
 to the nation's Millennial Exhibition ; what did they care, the 
 representatives of the Hungarian Government that but one and 
 
Immigration Abuses 109 
 
 two and three years before, some of the then members of the 
 Cabinet had received me, had honored me with their autographic 
 photographs, that I had been banqueted and feasted, — if but they 
 could stop my work effectually and secure my abandoning the 
 work to which I had devoted my best efforts ? 
 
 The stake was a mighty one, for them — these representa- 
 tives of the Magyar Government. 
 
 If they are attacked in the Halls of Parliament, if they are 
 attacked in the newspapers of the opposition, well, it is the game 
 of politics. 
 
 But when a plain American citizen, having no axe to grind, 
 no ulterior motives, with but a single eye to truth and to justice 
 charges, no, a thousand times no, convicts Count Tisza and his 
 satellites, the Dr. Keppichs, the Langs, the Dr. Pollaks, the Leo 
 Lanczys, the Aristide Dessewffys — of what use would it be to 
 give the entire register of culprits? — of being ordinary crooks, 
 common grafters, — then it is not a game of politics, then it is 
 the setting in roll the ball of snow which might grow into an 
 avalanche and which might cover them with eternal infamy and 
 disgrace. That must be stopped! And they did it. No, they 
 did not. " Truth crushed to earth,, will rise again, the eternal 
 world is hers ! " 
 
 The other day my official report became public property, 
 and it would be useless to embody it here, and now I wait for the 
 vindication time will bring and leave the Big Guns of the Hun- 
 garian Government to the opprobrium of their own nation. 
 
 Hungary will redeem herself. She will come out of her 
 present troubles rejuvenated, stronger, healthier than ever before. 
 
 And I, I will continue to do my work, " with malice toward 
 none, with charity to all " as the great Martyr President, im- 
 mortal Abraham Lincoln, had said. 
 
 I hope I still possess my God-given abilities to perform my 
 duty, whatever it might be, honestly and faithfully, to serve my 
 countrymen devotedly. In spite of the bitter experiences of last 
 
no Immigration Abuses 
 
 year I still have faith sublime in their common sense. I know 
 they will not be misled to believe me to be their enemy, or a rene- 
 gade, or a traitor, or the foul bird who has been soiling his own 
 nest and has spoken ill of Magyarland. 
 
 I dare say it, without fear of successful contradiction, no 
 Hungarian-American ever had such exalted, high opinion of 
 Magyarland, of Magyar literature, Magyar national life as have 
 I. I am not a blind partisan, I judge and God sees my heart, I 
 try to judge justly, and I am guided in my judgment by a desire 
 to serve the best interests of my native land. 
 
 Just lately, the representatives of the Government in Hun- 
 gary, were trying hard to destroy my influence, among the 
 Hungarians of this country, by accusing me of the heinous 
 crime of having brought Hungary to shame and to dis- 
 grace by reporting to the Government at Washington that the 
 Hungarian Government is emptying its jails, lunatic asylums, 
 poorhouses, and so forth, into our ports, thereby trying to make 
 believe that in my eyes, or according to my report, every Hun- 
 garian who comes into this country is either a criminal, a pauper, 
 a lunatic or some such unfit subject, and that in the case of 
 women, that they are harlots. 
 
 Horrible! And yet these ghoulish hyenas of the reputation 
 of men have actually charged me with all these and similar things, 
 have done so even in public print. 
 
 Friends, Americans, countrymen ! read my report, I have not 
 made any such report, I have made no such accusation against 
 Hungarian men and Hungarian women. I am not ashamed, nor 
 afraid to state here freely that if the conditions at " home " would 
 have been such as to justify such report as I am accused of having 
 made, I would rather have resigned than to have been the trump- 
 eter, announcing my native country's shame. 
 
 To lay bare the iniquities of the individuals, of the Tiszas 
 and the rest of them is one thing, to hold up the country of one's 
 birth to the opprobrium of the civilized world is another. Dear 
 
Immigration Abuses iii 
 
 America, forgive me! I make here the confession, that had it 
 been necessary to say those things or such things about Hungary 
 and Hungarian men and women, I would not have hesitated be- 
 tween love and duty, and resigning my position, love would have 
 been triuniphant. 
 
 In spite of this innate love for my native land I shall, how- 
 ever, never cease to tread the path I have been treading these 
 14 years : to try to educate the Hungarian immigrant to become 
 an American citizen knowing his responsibilities, cheerfully as- 
 suming his duties. 
 
 I have heretofore been trying to show, and I think I did it 
 successfully, that the moral and intellectual make-up of the Hun- 
 garian immigrant qualifies him to become an American citizen of 
 the highest order. 
 
 Of course, where there is light there is shadow, where the 
 great mass of Hungarian immigrants are sober, industrious, 
 honest, moved by a sense of duty and honor in all their actions, 
 there are among them drones, — they are found among all nation- 
 alities. These drones have but one gift, the gift of gab, but one 
 occupation : their " patriotism " ! These professional patriots I 
 hate with all the hatred I am capable of. They are a curse, as 
 loathsome as are the leprous. 
 
 The professional patriots are those, — and unfortunately 
 there are men and women among them, — who have the unmiti- 
 gated gall of daring to preach to the Hungarians that they are 
 committing a crime when they become American citizens. They 
 have all sorts of schemes to " save Hungary in America." They 
 are the men who have left their country for their country's good, 
 and who have not the heart and the brain to appreciate the bless- 
 ing they received when they were allowed to land. 
 
 For you, dear Magyarland, my heart goes out in deepest 
 love. You have been tried in peace and you have been tried in 
 war and you stood firm: the noble race of free men. You have 
 been tried by internal strifes and wars of races and civil wars 
 
112 Immigration Abuses 
 
 and religious wars and you came out victorious, a great nation. 
 You have outlived and you will outlive all attacks on you by 
 enemies from within and enemies from everywhere. The only 
 danger that may ever seriously affect your national existence is 
 corruption. 
 
 Beware ! 
 
 The world at large admires you; it judges you by your 
 history. All the world gives you its sympathy in your present 
 struggle. You are bound to come out victorious ; but to be able 
 to secure this glorious prize, your political independence and your 
 national freedom, you must shake off the burden of your corrupt 
 officials and their unholy alliance and partnership with degener- 
 ated Austria and Austrian statesmanship. 
 
 Beware ! 
 
 The very air of the nation scents and smells corruption, and 
 your parliamentary elections are but Punch and Judy shows, the 
 strings being pulled in Vienna, or at least are mighty nearly so. 
 
 Beware ! 
 
 Don't lose a hundred thousand and more of your citizens 
 annually by emigration. Better the conditions of the farmer and 
 the laborer and the artisan and the merchant to enable him to 
 make a decent living at home, but above all, if your citizens do 
 emigrate, do not permit their misery, their misfortune to become 
 the source of a thievish income to roguish officials, be these 
 ministers or subaltern officials. 
 
 And if they have emigrated, act in good faith to the country 
 where they have gone, let them assimilate and attain llheir goal 
 for which they had gone into that land, without fomenting strife 
 among them, without attempting to exercise a paternal supervision 
 over them whom, while at home, you have treated as if they had 
 been only your stepchildren, for had you treated them as lov- 
 ingly as you attempt to treat them now, after they had left your 
 boundaries, they probably never would have exiled themselves. 
 
Immigration Abuses 113 
 
 XVIII 
 Real Abuses and Insincere Apologies 
 
 The " Finis " had been said by me when I closed my last 
 chapter. I had thought to be through with my self-set task of 
 proving to my American readers who the Magyar is, what he is, 
 what his nation is. The individual brave and noble, the nation 
 great and on the highest pinnacle of European civilization. 
 
 I wanted to arouse in their hearts and minds the most sin- 
 cere admiration for the people of Magyarland and to appeal to 
 the American people not to visit on the Magyar people the sins 
 of commission and the sins of omission of their reactionary fool- 
 ish Government. 
 
 I wanted to show to the world, though but pressed into a 
 nutshell, the story of a great, noble race; of a generous people 
 full of the purest impulses for all that is good, true and elevating ; 
 of a literature rich and beauteous; of a commerce progressive 
 and prosperous ; of an industry advanced and conquerous, and to 
 appeal to the generous world at large to have faith and confidence 
 in the political ripeness and maturity of the Magyar people, so 
 that when the great struggle shall cpme, — alas, it is coming with 
 giant strides, — which shall decide the nation's fate, the political, 
 yea, the historical future of the country, let there be among the 
 nations of the earth one of the foremost, — the very foremost in 
 fact, — the American nation which shall give to the Magyar at 
 least sympathy and support which it so richly deserves. Let 
 America's sympathy and help be on the side, — as it always has 
 been, — of the liberty-loving Magyars. 
 
 I thought I had finished my task, when things occurred 
 which force the pen into my hand and here I am " at it again " ; 
 continuing the work I thought to have finished. 
 
 Mr. George Harvey has opened the columns of his " North 
 
114 Immigration Abuses 
 
 American Review " to a certain " Baron Louis de Levay," Royal 
 Commissioner of Emigration, who contributed to the January 
 number an article entitled " The Hungarian Emigration Law." 
 
 Mr. George Harvey is a famous man. He is the man who got 
 up that famous dinner of his, in honor of Count Witte, the 
 Russian Peace Ambassador. 
 
 Well, Mr. George Harvey — it seems — loves to bask 
 in the sunshine of European aristocracy. Why he should 
 call Mr. Louis de Levay a " Baron," I do not know. The author 
 of the article modestly signs himself " Louis de Levay," that is, 
 his good, honest name, but Mr. Harvey, whether out of vanity 
 to have some of the baronial glory reflect on him, or in a shrewd 
 spirit of advertising his review as one to which a Baron de Levay 
 is a contributor, elevates (?) him to the peerage. He does more. 
 
 He introduces " Baron Louis de Levay " to the American 
 readers by delivering the following eulogy : " Baron Louis de 
 Levay belongs to a distinguished Hungarian family. He was for 
 some time a member of the Hungarian Parliament. On the pas- 
 sage of the law which was framed to regulate emigration from 
 Hungary, he was appointed Royal Commissioner of Emigration 
 to superintend its administration. His article is published at the 
 instance and by the authority of the Hungarian Government." 
 
 Far be it from me to enter into a discussion of Mr. Levay's 
 personality (I have had my say to and with him, face to face, 
 to which I will return later), and I absolve him from all 
 responsibility as to the praise heaped upon him by Mr. Harvey. 
 And yet, I ought to be grateful to the latter. It ought to do me 
 all the good and pleasure in the world, and I should be proud of 
 seeing the descendant of the tribe from which the high priests of 
 my own religion sprang, recognized by him as "belonging to a 
 distinguished " family. So they are, the Levys and Loewys — 
 the " Kohanim " of the biblical period. Well, there is no shame 
 attached to it, and the shame and the disgrace of it is only in the 
 fact of he, the individual mentioned, being ashamed of it himself 
 
Immigration Abuses 115 
 
 and trying to escape from it by abandoning his faith, — but 
 the " distinguished Hungarian family " turns out to be a very 
 decent, average Hungarian Jewish family, made " famous " by 
 the uncle of the present " Baron," Mr. Heinrich Levay, formerly 
 Heinrich Lowy, vsrho was the founder of the now world-famed 
 Hungarian Insurance Company and for about a lifetime its 
 president, more successful than our own McCurdys, McCalls 
 and Hydes, because Mr. Heinrich Levay, though he too grew 
 rich and powerful, died universally beloved and honored in his 
 native land for his splendid qualities of mind and heart and char- 
 acter. For these, the King of Hungary had conferred the title 
 of nobility on him. 
 
 The " Baron " of Mr. Harvey was a nephew of Mr. Hein- 
 rich Levay, by him adopted, and to whom the title of nobility 
 descended. That is all there is to it, to the " Baronetcy," except 
 to mention the facts that the nephew of his uncle abandoned the 
 faith of his fathers and that he married an estimable American 
 girl, hailing from Rhode Island, who must have written for him 
 the English article in question, because from my personal ac- 
 quaintanceship with the gentleman, I dare say without fear of 
 contradiction, that he is neither mentally nor intellectually able to 
 have written the same. I do not refer to the English thereof, — 
 that he surely cannot have written, but that is pardonable, very 
 pardonable. I told him once that, judging him by his 
 speech, his argument, his discussion, his mental and intellectual 
 make-up shown at these discussions I had with him, I fear he 
 would not be able to pass a successful examination under our 
 civil service rules here in the United States for a position as a 
 night watchman in the New York Custom House. 
 
 I said it before, and I say it again, the writer of the article 
 in the North American Review is not to be held responsible for 
 the alleged greatness thrust upon him by Mr. Harvey, but he is 
 to be held responsible for the article he claims to have written. 
 
 Before taking up the discussion of the article in question, I 
 
ii6 Immigration Abuses 
 
 must refer to the last line of Mr. Harvey's introduction of Mr. 
 Levay : " His article is published at the instance and by the au- 
 thority of the Hungarian Government" (?). To be made the 
 mouthpiece through- whom the " Hungarian Government " ap- 
 peals to the American people for a square deal! The Hun- 
 garian Government! Which? For the six months preceding 
 the publication of the article, poor Hungary had a " Govern- 
 ment," but God save the mark, what kind of a goverrmient had 
 it been, and now, — last week in January, 1906, — it is still! 
 Brutal, cowardly, unjust, illegal, sustained by an armed inter- 
 ference with the most sacred and the most ancient rights of the 
 people. This government surely did not cause the publication 
 of the article. This government has " troubles of its own." 
 
 And why did " the government " — if a previous govern- 
 ment really did so, — authorize the writing and publication of 
 this article ? Why ? " Qui s'excuse, s'accuse," and the very old 
 -(Esopian story of the fox coming to the lion telling him : " Royal 
 master, I do not know why you have ordered your animal king- 
 dom before you, but if you did it to ascertain who had devoured 
 the lambs of Mother Sheep, I want to assure you that I did not 
 do it ! " comes to my mind. 
 
 Mr. Levay, however, as if feeling the necessity to say some- 
 thing to excuse his taking up the cudgels, speaks of " newspapers 
 hostile to Hungary " . . . . Listen, Mr. Levay. If you can put 
 your finger on an " American newspaper hostile to Hungary " I 
 will send 500 or 1,000 crowns to any charitable institution of 
 Hungary which you may want to be made the recipient of your 
 charity. Nonsense ! " An American newspaper hostile to Hun- 
 gary " ! American newspapers might on one or the other oc- 
 casion not be well informed upon Magyar affairs, they might be 
 misled on one or the other occasion by misleading or false re- 
 ports ; they might make an error in choosing the sources of their 
 information; but on the main the American newspapers are 
 better informed upon Magyar affairs than are Hungarian news- 
 
Immigration Abuses 117 
 
 papers informed of American affairs; American newspapers 
 understand Magyar conditions better than do Hungarian news- 
 papers understand American conditions; and, over and above 
 everything, there is not an American newspaper in the United 
 States against whom a charge of " hostiUty to Hungary " could 
 be made, or if made by some foolish man, could be substantiated ! 
 The true reason of the publication is the protest of the fox in the 
 ^sopian fable above told. 
 
 As I said before, I have had the " pleasure " of meeting the 
 alleged writer of the article in question. It was at the Club 
 Rooms of the Liberal Party at Budapest. Discussing certain 
 phases of the agreement made between the Hungarian Gov- 
 ernment and the Cunard Steamship Company, I pointed out 
 certain features thereof, which, to my mind, were objectionable. 
 In order to convince me of my being wrong, Mr.i Levay told me : 
 " But I spoke about this matter to the late. President McKinley 
 and he told me he was very glad to note that we Hungarians were 
 finally trying to get away from the influence of the Germans." 
 To this I dryly responded that I would much prefer if Mr. Levay 
 — when making statements to me — would refer to living wit- 
 nesses. A few minutes later, — we had continued to discuss " emi- 
 gration," — Mr. Levay assumed an attitude of menace and threat 
 and said, "if the U. S. Government continued to make all kinds 
 of objections and introduce bills such as were introduced at that 
 time in both houses of Congress, he would direct the Hungarian 
 emigration to other countries." 
 
 There it is, the cat is out of the bag, the nail sticks out of the 
 bag ! " He would direct the Hungarian emigration to other coun- 
 tries ! " Is there a fair-minded person, who, on hearing these 
 threatening words, does not come to the conclusion that the Hun- 
 garian Government actually directs emigration from the land? 
 
 But now, let me reproduce here, parts of the famous article. 
 
 " The emigration policy of the Hungarian Government and 
 the administration of its emigration laws have recently been the 
 
ii8 Immigration Abuses 
 
 subject of much misrepresentation by a portion of the American 
 press. They have been discussed in a manner calculated to bring 
 Hungary and her people into disfavor in America, and to disturb 
 the cordial relations existing between the United States and the 
 Kingdom of Hungary. Falsely colored reports have been indus- 
 triously circulated, to the effect that the Hungarian Government 
 is applying the emigration law solely for the purpose of encourag- 
 ing emigration in the interest of the Cunard Line. Newspapers 
 hostile to Hungary have degraded themselves by the absurd and 
 wanton statement that Hungary is making use of her emigration 
 law to rid herself of undesirable elements of her population, and 
 to disgorge her criminals, wastrels and proletarians." 
 
 " The time has clearly come to contradict these and similar 
 misrepresentations, by a public declaration of the motives which 
 have induced the Hungarian Legislature to regulate emigration 
 by law." 
 
 " The number of emigrants from Hungary to the United 
 States during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and 
 as late as the year 1899, averaged from twenty to thirty thousand 
 annually. It then increased, in a sudden and most surprising way, 
 to more than sixty thousand, and in 1903 even rose to 120,000." 
 
 " On the formulating of the law of 1903 — the drafting of 
 which was preceded by a thorough study of the emigration laws 
 of foreign countries — there were, among the members of the Leg- 
 islature, as well as among the members of the press, many who, 
 in accordance with public opinion, demanded that the emigration 
 evil should be radically ended by a formal prohibition. However 
 much such a radical remedy might be demanded by the econo- 
 mical interests of Hungary — for Hungary loses taxpayers by the 
 emigration, and does not give up to America a superfluity of labor 
 but rather such as could very profitably be employed at home — 
 it could not be expected, consistently with the liberal principles of 
 our State Institutions, that such an effective but reactionary 
 measure could be taken into serious consideration by well-advised 
 
Immigration Abuses 119 
 
 statesmen. The principal of personal liberty (Mr. Levay is very 
 serious when he talks about personal liberty), maintained by us, 
 absolutely excludes a general prohibition of emigration. In some 
 form, however, an effective check to emigration is the ultimate 
 problem, to be solved in time by carefully conceived and arranged 
 economical and industrial enterprises, which will offer to the 
 people avenues to those higher wages which at present are 
 looked for beyond the sea. Until such an economical process ma- 
 tures, emigration must be immediately regulated in such a nian- 
 ner as will subserve the best interests of the population." 
 
 " This regulation was defined in the law of 1903. The pro- 
 visions of the law are twofold. It contains enactments whose ob- 
 ject is, when feasible, to prevent emigration and to protect the 
 people from the fever of emigration ; it also aims at securing the 
 moral and material interests of those persons who have finally 
 made up their mind to emigrate." 
 
 " Apart from their fixed tariffs and time-tables, emigra- 
 tion transportation companies and their representatives are not 
 allowed (section 11, 12) to issue any publications encouraging 
 emigration, nor to send out time-tables save to those who apply for 
 them." 
 
 " Only persons provided with a passport can take passage, and 
 a passport is granted to those only against whom no obstacle to 
 emigration exists." 
 
 " The emigration law also provides for the creation of a 
 fund, from which emigrants who have suffered some calamity 
 that has rendered impossible their further maintenance in the 
 country of their choice, may be furnished with assistance to fa- 
 cilitate their return to their homes. It is inconceivable that objec- 
 tion should be raised by Americans to that which provides for the 
 return of those who otherwise would become a burden and a 
 charge upon the United States." (Mr. Levay forgets to state that 
 they have limited the number of these to-be-helped emigrants to 
 500 per year.) 
 
I20 Immigration Abuses 
 
 " Nothing now remains but to discuss section 6 of the 
 Emigration Law, which we have reserved until the last, because 
 that legal provision forms the basis of that arrangement between 
 the Hungarian Government and the Cunard Line which is so much 
 discussed and so often misunderstood. By this provision, the Min- 
 ister of the Home Department, is authorized to lead the current 
 of emigration in a direction which will render possible the close 
 and complete control of it. The evils which have been men- 
 tioned can be effectually cured by this means, and among them 
 those primary evils from which emigrants have had to suffer on 
 their journey to the borders of the country to the port of embarka- 
 tion." 
 
 " The Hungarian Minister determined to direct the emigra- 
 tion to the domestic port of Fiume. As soon as the resolution of 
 the Hungarian Government became known, the shipping compa- 
 nies which had hitherto solicited the transportation of Hungarians 
 submitted proposals by which, referring to the large investments 
 connected with the enterprise, the risks, etc., they asked for a con- 
 siderable governmental subvention and a guarantee of a fixed 
 number of emigrants." 
 
 " The two most prominent German shipping companies went 
 so far as to ask, in their joint demand, for an annual subvention 
 of 500,000 Kronen (crowns) and a guarantee of 35,000 emigrants 
 together with a considerable number of returning emigrants. 
 These propositions were not considered by the Hungarian Gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 (At this juncture ]\Ir. Levay ought have also stated why the 
 German companies asked a subsidy. The representative of the 
 Hungarian Government who was negotiating with these concerns 
 told them, that it would be necessary to bribe some of the legisla- 
 tors to agree to whatever terms would be made, and that the 
 subsidy asked was to be used for these bribes.) 
 
 " It was at this time that a proposition was voluntarily sub- 
 mitted by the representatives of the Cunard Line to the Hungarian 
 
Immigration Abuses 121 
 
 Government stating that the Company was prepared to open a 
 ' Hungarian-American Line,' with Fiume as the port of depar- 
 ture, without any subvention or guarantee whatever." 
 
 " The only surety asked for by the Cunard Line was that, 
 in case the number of emigrants in one year was less than 30,000 
 the Government should contribute a sum of 100 Kronen per capi- 
 ta of the difference, to cover a possible deficit. This proviso was 
 originally inserted in the proposition, but was later omitted." 
 (Here again Mr. Levay fails to tell that instead to the Cunard 
 Co. the same guaranty was given to the Adria S. S. Co., its gen- 
 eral representative for Hungary.) 
 
 " Our object has been to make it clearly evident that the aim 
 and purpose of the Hungarian Legislature and Government have 
 been, through their emigration policy, to hold the subjects of Hun- 
 gary to their own soil, without neglecting measures of precaution 
 and protection in behalf of those who cannot resist a restless mi- 
 grating craving, and finally to make those measures conform to 
 the laws by which other Powers, and particularly the United 
 States, regulate immigration." 
 
 " We hope we have succeeded in bringing such incontrover- 
 tible and convincing evidence to the minds of fair-minded readers." 
 
 Louis De Levay. 
 
 Mr. Levay quotes in his article sections 13-19 of the Hun- 
 garian Emigration Laws of 1903, stating that none but Hungarian 
 subjects, having an unblemished record, can be appointed as 
 agents and that only at a fixed salary, exclusive of any commis- 
 sion." 
 
 That is what the law says. Please look at the reports made by 
 me and others, and see how it is executed. Every statement con- 
 tained in my report, is backed up by absolute evidence. Of course 
 they are very clever. On its face the law looks all right. They 
 say, when they appoint a new agent, — and they appoint one quite 
 frequently, — that he is to get " so much a month." But woe to 
 the agent who does not get enough emigrants to warrant " so 
 
122 Immigration Abuses 
 
 much a month." He is immediately discharged, and somebody 
 else is found who can secure emigrants in sufficient numbers to 
 warrant the payment of " so m.uch per month." 
 
 Now let us see how they treat the agent who obtains twice, 
 three times, and sometimes ten times the number of emigrants 
 that was expected of him. According to the law, they cannot 
 very well afford to raise the salary into thousands a month, which 
 would be out of proportion to the scale of salaries of the country, 
 so the very convenient excuse, old as the hills in countries where 
 boodle and graft rule supreme, " allowance for expenses " is made, 
 as, for instance, in the case of one agent in Kassa, who draws as 
 much as three thousand crowns per month, of which about four 
 hundred crowns are booked as salary, and the balance as " office 
 allowances and extraordinary expenses," and if Mr. — I believe 
 Ftilop Laszlo is his name — will secure still more emigrants than 
 he is securing now, his " office allowances and extraordinary ex- 
 penses " will probably go up as high as five or six thousand crowns 
 per month, while his salary will remain four hundred. Mr. Levay 
 knows this. He must know it, unless he has no more brains than 
 a rabbit. He must also know that another statement which he 
 makes is not true. For the benefit of the reader, let it be quoted : 
 
 " Emigration is absolutely forbidden to persons who have 
 been criminally sentenced or who are under criminal investiga- 
 tion, and a mere reference to this legal provision should suffice 
 to silence the absurd and flagitious tales which charge the Hun- 
 garian Government with a sinister attempt to get rid of criminals 
 and feeble-minded persons by means of the emigration law. Emi- 
 gration is forbidden to criminals and weak-minded. A rigorous 
 observance of this interdict is guaranteed by the legal provision 
 by which every emigrant is required to take out a passport ex- 
 pressly mentioning the country to which he intends to emigrate. 
 Such passports can be obtained only by persons against whom 
 there exists no legal interdict, or cause for restraining their liberty 
 to emigrate." 
 
Immigration Abuses 123 
 
 Now I don't mean to indicate, I never did indicate, that the 
 Hungarian Government is engaged in the business of shipping 
 out of its country criminals or feeble-minded persons, or women 
 for immoral purposes. Anybody who makes such a statement, 
 be the making of the charge wilful or careless use of foolish lan- 
 guage, is a miserable, cowardly, heartless fellow and does not 
 know what he is talking about. No Government no matter how 
 corrupt it might be would do that, if for no other reason than be- 
 cause it would not pay. This, however, does not mean to say 
 that Mr. Levay tells the truth when he claims that no passport 
 can be obtained by persons who belong to that class, and the rec- 
 ords of the various United States Immigration Stations in this 
 country very clearly show that frequently feeble-minded persons, 
 ex-convicts, and immoral women present themselves at the various 
 ports of landing for admission, with Hungarian or for that matter 
 with other Government passports in their possession, and I am 
 sorry to state that only in very rare cases are such persons de- 
 tected. Now, how is that? It is very plain and very simple. 
 The minor official in the various cities of Hungary who take the 
 applications and who issue the passports, do not dare to refuse a 
 passport to any applicant. True, their law is clear ; but that minor 
 official has a higher law, and that is the friendship of the agent 
 who sells the ticket to the emigrant, — a friendship which 
 sometimes is worth quite a few hundred crowns during the year 
 to the official. He figures it out in cold cash, that every emi- 
 grant to whom he refuses a passport, either will get away with- 
 out it, and without purchasing his ticket in Hungar}', or 
 else he will stay at home, and in both instances this means a loss 
 to the agent, and, perhaps, indirectly a loss to him. 
 
 For the benefit of the American public let it be said that I 
 have never seen on any passport application blank, anything which 
 would justify Mr. Levay to say that this passport question is 
 handled in Hungary as he claims it is, and, for that matter, no- 
 where in the world. As a matter of fact, I don't think that, ac- 
 
124 Immigration Abuses 
 
 cording to the laws of any country, a passport can be denied to 
 any person who desires to go on a trip abroad. If there be some 
 charge pending against the person, the passport will be refused 
 by every European Government as a matter of course. If there 
 are no charges against him pending, his passport comes to him 
 beyond any doubt, — always providing of there being no other 
 legal impediment in the way. The statement that an ex-convict 
 cannot obtain a passport is either a wilful lie, or else the person 
 offering the same does not know what he is talking about. 
 
 There is another thing I would like to state for the benefit 
 of Mr. Levay, in case he does not know it, and which is liable to 
 place in the proper light some actions of Hungarian Government 
 officials. I know of cases where Hungarian Government offi- 
 cials have aided the entrance into this country of persons who 
 were held up by U. S. Immigration officials and excluded by a 
 Board of Special Inquiry, as for instance, a certain case where a 
 Hungarian deputy arrived here on the Cunard liner " Slavonia," 
 and on the same ship arrived his mistress, a young Slovak peas- 
 ant girl, who shortly before she started on her trip to America, 
 had given birth to an illegitimate child, of which this deputy was 
 the father. The girl was promptly held up at Ellis Island, and 
 ordered deported, but at that moment there stepped in an official 
 of the Austro-Hungarian Consulate of New York, and through 
 his testimony and money which he gave to the girl, made it 
 possible she should be allowed to land, contrary to law and in my 
 opinion contrary to precedents. 
 
 I know of another case where the Hungarian Government 
 issued a warrant of caption against a certain Hungarian who was 
 charged with various crimes. Yet I know that for this same in- 
 dividual one of the officials of the Austro-Hungarian Consulate 
 waited upon his arrival, to see to his safe passing into this country. 
 On the other hand, I also know of cases where the representa- 
 tives of the Austro-Hungarian Government in New York City 
 made a request to the Immigration Officials at Ellis Island to 
 
Immigration Abuses 125 
 
 detain and deport a certain alien on some trumped-up charge, 
 whereas that alien was absolutely admissible under our laws. 
 In one of such cases referred to, the deportation would have meant 
 not only an injustice, but the consummation of a dastardly con- 
 spiracy. The alien to whom I make reference is still in the United 
 States, but he surely would have been deported had it not been 
 for some compatriots of his who secured his release. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Responsibility of S. S. Companies. 
 
 Mr. Levay also tries to create the impression that the Cunard 
 steamship company needs his defence. Mr. Levay is wrong. The 
 Cunard steamship company is no better and no worse than any 
 other steamship company. These are mostly great, powerful con- 
 cerns, established on a business basis, and they try their level best 
 to carry on their business on a decent and honorable basis, and 
 only a demagogue would come out with the statement that the 
 steamship companies are in a conspiracy to defeat our immigra- 
 tion laws. On my official travels for the U. S. Government, I 
 have covered over 200,000 miles, and I have endeavored many, 
 many times, to detect the steamship companies in an open and 
 wilful violation of our immigration laws, but I have never suc- 
 ceeded. I can conscientiously say that these steamship companies 
 are most rigorously trying to obey the letter and spirit of our 
 laws. Still there are violations by agents and sub-agents who 
 work on a commission basis, and who will, in many cases, tell 
 the emigrant, if he happens to be for instance an ex-convict, that 
 he must not say so whenever that question is asked, and he or 
 they will tell a woman who led an immoral life on the other side, 
 and who thinks she can come to the United States for the same 
 purposes, that she must not tell it to anybody if that question is 
 
126 Immigration Abuses 
 
 asked. Or if, perchance, an immigrant has been assisted by 
 some charitable institution, or perhaps was confined for some 
 time in a lunatic asylum, the agent may warn him not to say that 
 to anybody, but in none of the offices of the steamship companies 
 will the emigrant, belonging to the classes above enumerated, ob- 
 tain his ticket, nor will he be allowed to board a ship, if any such 
 thing was known about it to the company. I have over and over 
 again tried, — disguised as an emigrant, — I went into the steam- 
 ship offices and wanted to know whether I should have any 
 trouble in landing. I said I was only recently released from an 
 insane asylum, or, in some cases I stated from states prison, and 
 I was invariably told : " My dear sir, you cannot go to the 
 United States." 
 
 The question how far the steamship companies are respons- 
 ible for the acts of their agents or sub-agents is not for me to 
 decide. Once upon a time I made the suggestion that a law 
 should be framed which would forbid steamship companies to 
 have agents who sell tickets on a commision basis, and the follow- 
 ing reply was given to me : " We have in the United States over 
 five thousand steamship agents. We pay them in commissions 
 for cabin tickets alone hundreds of thousands of dollars. But 
 these agents do not bring us a single passenger. We would sell 
 just as many tickets, and if we had the room, more than we ac- 
 tually do sell without agents, but then we would need such an in- 
 mense apparatus of clerks and offices, which not only would cost 
 us more, but which would make it impossible to carry on the 
 business in sufficient time to have our ships sail on schedule. 
 This question of agents is not a question of obtaining business, 
 but simply a reason to expedite it, which would be a physical im- 
 possibility otherwise." 
 
 As I said before, the Cunard steamship company does not 
 need Mr. Levay as an attorney to defend it, but I have good reason 
 to believe that the Cunard Steamship Company was buncoed into 
 this Hungarian-American Line from Fiume to New York, and 
 
Immigration Abuses 127 
 
 I also have good reason to believe if they could conveniently, 
 with sufficient decorum, withdraw from it, they would gladly do 
 so, because they know by this time the crowd they have to deal 
 with. 
 
 Whenever violations of our immigration laws occur on the 
 part of steamship companies proper, it is seldom their direct fault. 
 I have observed that they take good precaution at every port of 
 embarkation to prevent any emigrant from boarding their ships, 
 if there is some defect visible or known to those who are entrusted 
 with the task of making the inspection. In such cases where they 
 have to depend on the answers of the emigrant, they are in pre- 
 cisely the same position as our own immigration officials are. 
 If the immigrant does not choose to tell any of his moral defects, 
 and if there is nobody to warn the officials of such defects, and 
 he is otherwise a healthy emigrant, has a good address and suf- 
 ficient money, the emigrant is allowed to proceed by our own, as 
 well as by the officials of the steamship companies, and the cardinal 
 point with this question is how to make it possible not to be com- 
 pelled to rely on the immigrant, who generally, prior to his reach- 
 ing the port of embarkation, has been well coached and instructed 
 by persons who make a living from it. 
 
 This Hungarian emigration law of 1903 was gotten up to 
 throw sand into the eyes of those people of Hungary, who hon- 
 estly and sincerely are opposed to emigration, which is detri- 
 mental to the interests of Hungary, and on the other hand it cre- 
 ated a monopoly to fill the pockets of certain officials and favor- 
 ites of the Tisza-Fejervary regime, by which they are to be re- 
 warded for their heavy contributions to the campaign funds of 
 Mr. Tisza and similar " statesmen," and who had to be recom- 
 pensed in some way. 
 
 I shall deal with Mr. Levay and his article a little later on, 
 a little more elaborately ; I will do so, however, only indirectly. 
 
128 Immigration Abuses 
 
 XX 
 Plain Truths 
 
 On January 6th, 1906, the House of Representatives adopted 
 a resolution introduced by the Hon. Wm. Sulzer, who represents 
 the tenth congressional district of New York asking the Depart- 
 ment of Commerce and Labor to transmit copies of certain reports 
 made to that department by the writer of these lines. The report 
 was transmitted to Congress, and it is now public property as 
 House Document No. 384 of the ist Session of the 59th Congress. 
 
 Before the publication of that report I had a pretty hard 
 time of it. Being in the service of the United States and my re- 
 port being an official document, I could not think of making it 
 public. 
 
 Did not I wish to be free to do so ! What a heap of abuse 
 was hurled at and piled upon me. True, it was only a tempest 
 in the teapot, the sun rose and set, the tide ebbed and flowed, al- 
 though I felt pretty sore under the accusations — direct and by 
 innuendo — made against me of my having " betrayed " my native 
 country. The most ridiculous, the most scandalous reports were 
 flying around. All I could do was to continue the even tenor of 
 my ways, to attend to my work, and wait. Well, Congress re- 
 solved to make public my official report. Let it speak for itself. 
 
 I was instrumental in having it produced because I felt that 
 the people of this country should know every line thereof relat- 
 ing to Hungarian Emigration. I did so for the sake of proving 
 to my fellow-citizens that Dame Rumor is not reliable as a report- 
 er, that " Patent- Patriots " are quite often liars and black-hearted 
 villains, to whom the honor of their fellow-man is naught, if they 
 can but gain something, even if it be but a " twenty-four hours 
 prominence " alias notoriety, by it. 
 
 Let the report speak for itself. That report is my vindication. 
 Not a line, not a sentence, not a phrase thereof has been dis- 
 proved. No attempt to disprove it has been made. 
 
Immigration Abuses 129 
 
 The report caused a good deal of comment. I have been 
 praised and I have been condemned. Condemned by whom ? By 
 the Austro-Hvmgarian Consulates, speaking through their syco- 
 phantic agents and mouthpieces. One newspaper — to the credit 
 of American journalism, it must be said that it was not an Ameri- 
 can newspaper, but a newspaper published in a foreign tongue 
 in America — picked out a sentence, and that sentence, not in 
 its entirety, and dismissed the entire report with the remark: 
 " blood is thicker than water." The sentence being the following 
 remark : " One word more about another class of immigrants, to 
 wit, the Russian Jew. While it is true that the Russian Hebrew 
 possesses a good many of the objectionable characteristics with 
 reference to other undesirable immigrants, it must be conceded 
 that once he becomes a resident of this country he stays, and his 
 children rank among the most patriotic and thriftiest of our citi- 
 zenship." 
 
 Another foreign paper in America, in presenting a part of 
 my report to its readers, introduces it with the remark : " We 
 have received the reports of the Immigration Inspector, born in 
 an unfavorably known religion, Mr. Marcus Braun." 
 
 Well, the truth, fearlessly told, hurts. You editors of Mag- 
 yar, German, Slovak, Italian, Yiddish, and Syrian papers in Amer- 
 ica, have forgotten that I have been sent abroad with the task 
 assigned to me to investigate conditions governing emigration 
 into the United States. I was expected to do my work honestly 
 and faithfully. I feel I did it. Your very ire and anger prove 
 that I did. 
 
 I gratefully recognize the encouragement I received from 
 other Hungarian editors, who were honest enough to emancipate 
 themselves from their " Magyar " feeling, and looked upon my 
 work with the calmness and the discrimination and the justice of 
 the American critic. 
 
 My reports speak for themselves. I might have made a mis- 
 take here or there, but I don't believe I did. I am sure I did not 
 
130 Immigration Abuses 
 
 make a single statement which I did not substantiate with pretty 
 reliable, convincing proof. 
 
 What I wrote was not an essay ; it was a report, plain, truth- 
 ful, honest, based on personal observation, on evidence, on proof, 
 on testimony uncontradicted. 
 
 I have not tried to give impressions, I have not been riding 
 a hobby-horse, I have had no scheme or plan or a theory of my 
 own which I wished to advance. 
 
 Let me also lay emphasized stress upon the declaration that 
 I am not an American know-nothing, if there still be such a " rara 
 avis " in American public life. In my report I did not try to prove 
 anything pro or con emigration. 
 
 Liberty-loving people fi-om all points of the compass, people 
 who desire to find " the golden key to golden opportunity," will 
 come here as long as the United States remains the land of the 
 free and the home of the brave, and as long as Law, Labor and 
 Liberty remain the trinity held sacred by the American people. 
 
 Immigration and emigration are, however, questions not un- 
 derstood by all, or rather, well understood only by few, although 
 a thorough understanding of the questions involved is claimed 
 by everybody. 
 
 And yet, the national economic, the political, the ethical, the 
 national questions involved in " immigration " are too deep, too 
 intricate, too grand, to allow every amateur sociologist, or the 
 average Tom, Dick and Harry to " butt in " — as the somewhat 
 inelegant slang of the streets would express it. 
 
 More than this. There is too much playing to the galleries. 
 Lots of hypocrisy, a good deal of demagogery, and plenty of 
 intrigue, have attempted to have their say, and they have said it, 
 at times, successfully, and the blind can read the inscriptions upon 
 the milestones of our immigration laws, born of an origin miser- 
 able and cowardly. 
 
 No such laws for me ! I believe in immigration. Of course, 
 in immigration of the right kind, and "the more the merrier." 
 
Immigration Abuses 131 
 
 There is lots of elbow-room in the United States. I no more fear 
 of the United States being made to suffer from the influx of for- 
 eigners — I do not care from whence they come — than I fear 
 that the arrival of French immigrants might inoculate Napoleonic 
 or Royalistic ideas into the American people. 
 
 Let them come, the modern Magyar Argonauts, let them be 
 welcome, but welcome only if they come here to stay, to be 
 assimilated and formed and educated into free American citizens. 
 Let them think of their native land with grateful love. It is their 
 bounden duty. Let them sing the tuneful songs of the Alfold, 
 dance the inspiring csardas, read the divine poetry of Arany and 
 Petofi, drop a sentient tear when thinking of their country's glor- 
 ious past, grow enthusiastic while resounds the stirring strain of 
 their Rakoczy march ; point with pride to their leaders of thought 
 and action: Szechenyi, Deak, Kossuth — it is their right! It is 
 their sacred duty! 
 
 Over and above their love for the old home on the banks of 
 the blue Dianube and the blonde Tisza, let them become true, faith- 
 ful, loyal Americans, and the Hungarian immigration question is 
 solved. I object, and I am only one in many millions who think 
 likewise, to the immigrant who comes here to remain here only 
 temporarily, who comes here only to earn a certain sum of money 
 wherewith to go home again. There is an old maxim in law 
 which says that there are things one man — individually — might 
 freely do. There is no harm in it. But if by a number of men, 
 who prearranged it, it becomes a conspiracy, it becomes a crime. 
 
 This is exactly the situation here. The Magyar immigrant 
 has the inherent right, has the sacred privilege to settle down here 
 and, after having been living here — be it however short or how- 
 ever long a time — to resolve to go " home " again, but for a num- 
 ber of them to come here with that fixed resolve — no, sir! I 
 am against such immigration and I want none of it ! Such immi- 
 gration does not add to the weal of the nation. 
 
 With equally strenuous earnestness, I say : I want no immi- 
 
132 Immigration Abuses 
 
 gration over which the old country, whence such immigration 
 comes, exercises any jurisdictional functions and influences. If 
 your country was good enough to be left behind and to be ex- 
 patriated from, then that country ought not to be good enough to 
 be your guardian while here in the United States. 
 
 Give no room to the immigrant — this is what I recommend 
 in my reports — who, on settling here, is not absolutely free from 
 the influences of his native land (of course I do not refer here to 
 the influences of the home and the family ties, etc.), and never 
 forget that he probably never would have emigrated hither had 
 his old home been willing to do for him as much as it does now, 
 or attempts to do, or promises to do, for him now, when the 
 danger of his expatriating himself for good stares into the face of 
 the small peanut politicians of that native country of his. 
 
 Under no circumstances must the old home government — 
 which the immigrant had exchanged for our own — be allowed to 
 exercise any influence over the immigrant whom it had allowed 
 to go away from home. Once he has put his foot upon our soil 
 he belongs to us. We are responsible for him. Shall the social, 
 political, commercial, intellectual and religious life of the Magyar 
 immigrant in the United States be under the tutelage, the guard- 
 ianship and paternal authority of the Magyar Government? Of 
 course not, a thousand^ times no ! 
 
 Zealously, though somewhat late, the Magyar Government 
 wishes to look after the welfare of the Magyar immigrant after 
 he has ceased to be an inhabitant of his beloved Magyarland, 
 driven from that native land by this very Magyar Government's 
 foolhardiness and political corruption. 
 
 That government which, at home, impoverished the citizen 
 by taxes unbearable, by trampling upon the citizens' rights, by 
 crushing every effort for a betterment of conditions, by brutally 
 disregarding law and justice and equity, by erasing from the face 
 of the political life of the country everything that is worth while 
 to live for, to fight for, to die for — if need be — and in conse- 
 
Immigration Abuses 133 
 
 quence of which — at last — the Magyar citizen takes the wan- 
 derer's staff into hand — that government, I say, has the daring, 
 the contemptible audacity, the unmitigated impudence to tell these 
 citizens going away from home and settling down in the United 
 States : " Do not become Americans, remain good Hungarians ! 
 We will send you teachers, priests, flags ; learn from the Yankee 
 his " go-ahead," earn in Yankee land the American dollar, but 
 do not become an American citizen, and when you have earned 
 enough to pay off the mortgages on your old farms and to re- 
 deem your notes held by the note brokers and usurers, then come 
 home to Hungary !" 
 
 It is true that the imbecility, the corruption, the inefficiency, 
 the shortsightedness, the rottenness of this very government 
 forced that Magyar immigrant to put a mortgage on his old farm 
 and sent him to the usurer note-broker to borrow money. What 
 does the government care? 
 
 But we, here in America, do care! We tell you. Imperial 
 and Royal Austro-Hungarian ministers at Budapest and Vienna, 
 we do care! The United States has passed its laws regulating 
 immigration to be respected, even by you Austrian and Magyar 
 grand seigneurs, you, who are grand masters in hair-splitting, 
 picayune, peanut politics, the A B C of which seems to be 
 Deceit and the marrow and sinew of which are Corruption. 
 
 All interference with the immigrant must stop with the very 
 moment he enters upon our soil. If, of his own volition and free 
 will, he decides to go back to Austria-Hungary, God bless him, 
 he can go. But if, by artificial means — be these means even 
 seemingly prompted by good motives, as for instance, to teach 
 him, to give him religious consolation, to be to him charitable — 
 there be kept alive not in the individual immigrant, but in the 
 Magyar immigration as a class, an agitation to remain Magyars 
 and not to become Americans, to remain here but temporarily and 
 not become a member of the body politic of the nation, then, I say, 
 the Hungarian Government is guilty of violating our immigration 
 
134 Immigration Abuses 
 
 laws ; then, I say, these immigrants must be classed among those 
 whom our laws declare to be undesirable and they must be ex- 
 cluded. 
 
 Right and duty of the United States demand this ! No for- 
 eign interference. You Magyar immigrants are as welcome here 
 as the English, the Irish, the French, the Scandinavian and the 
 others, too numerous to mention. To me, individually, more wel- 
 come than all others, for I know your manliness, your thrift, your 
 adaptability, your steadiness, your honesty, your industry, your 
 love of liberty, your love of peace ! You are welcome to make all 
 the money you can, you are welcome to — you have the right to — 
 do with your money whatever you please. You can send it home 
 to alleviate the needs of those you have left at home. When I 
 spoke in my reports of the millions you send home I found no 
 fault with the sending of it; you earned it, it was yours. I only 
 found fault in the systematic methods, means and manner which 
 brings you here to earn these sums of money and then to return 
 " home," because governmental influences prevented you from 
 becoming American citizens and be assimilated, and thus enjoy 
 not only the blessings and privileges of your being here, but also 
 assuming the burdens and the duties of American citizenship, and 
 to do this with a heart, throbbing for all that is best and purest 
 therein. 
 
 No man can serve two masters. You Magyars in America 
 must decide whether you shall become Americans or remain Mag- 
 yars at heart. I can feel every sentiment of your hearts. I am a 
 Magyar by birth and education. I know the beauty and the glory 
 of Magyarland, where every clod is a memory, where nameless, 
 countless heroes' blood irrigated the fields, where the boughs and 
 the crown of trees sough and sigh and speak of deeds great and 
 sublime ! But I came here of my own free choice. So did you ! 
 And you and I have learned here of the deeds of the giant minds 
 and noble souls of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton 
 and Adams, moulding the shape of thought of men when the re- 
 
Immigration Abuses 135 
 
 public was founded; we learned of the deeds of the men of the 
 calibre of Webster and Clay, of Lincoln and Grant, of Seward 
 and Chase, of Conkling and Blaine, of Hancock and McClellan ; 
 we know Cleveland and Roosevelt ! 
 
 America ! I love you ! And you Magyars coming here, you 
 must love this land of your own free choice! Not the America 
 which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, not her moun- 
 tains and rivers, cities and villages, mines and factories, schools 
 and churches ; we must love America which — like Hungary — 
 produced sons, of whom all of the civilized world is proud, because 
 the deeds of these sons made humanity happier and richer and 
 noEIer and better ; which produced Washington, who gave to his 
 nation the watchword of duty and turned into swords every 
 ploughshare in the land. 
 
 Which produced men like Patrick Henry, who, when he said 
 " Give me liberty or give me death," sounded the clarion note of 
 freedom which echoed throughout the colonies. 
 
 Like Daniel Webster, who, when he said " Liberty and Union, 
 now and forever, one and inseparable," expounded for his coun- 
 trymen a new article of faith to strengthen them against the 
 gathering storm. 
 
 Like Abraham Lincoln, who, when he, at Gettysburg, said 
 " This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom," in- 
 spired a faith as sublime as his own, that " a government of the 
 people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the 
 earth." 
 
 Like Ulysses S. Grant, who, when he said " I will fight it 
 out on this line, if it takes all summer," taught the nation that 
 by courage, patience, perseverance, the cause of the Union and 
 of human liberty would eventually be victorious. 
 
 Like Theodore Roosevelt, who, when he said " a square deal " 
 shall be given to all, enriched the human race with a political 
 tenet great and sublime. 
 
 This is the America I love, you Magyars coming here must 
 
136 Immigration Abuses 
 
 love if you want to be found worthy of being received here, and 
 to this America you and I, all of us, must pledge our undying 
 love. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 The foregoing pages were in type and printed when the 
 American people were informed of the recall of Mr. Bellamy 
 Storer, the American Ambassador at the Habst%irg Court. 
 
 The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind eflcctually . 
 
 The un-American American, who has allowed himself to be 
 overawed by the aristocracy and the wily politicians of an effete 
 monarchy, who, notwithstanding his long years of residence at 
 Vienna, and his still longer experience in the diplomatic service, 
 did not know the real status of Hungary and the official position 
 of Count Goluchowsky, has met his Waterloo. He showed his 
 ability by committing the unpardonable political sin, or stupid 
 blunder or the perfidy of mentioning in one of his official reports 
 Hungary as one of the provinces of Austria. 
 
 He was ignominiously recalled; his noble-hearted wife, of 
 course, took up his fight and put forth a strong — or what she, 
 in good faith, thought to be a strong — defence in his behalf, but 
 the fact remains, he has been most summarily recalled. Poor 
 Storer ! Requiescat in pace. 
 
 In connection with my case, diplomacy has committed many 
 other sins of omission and commission against me. Some other 
 time, on some other occasion, I might feel inclined to speak more 
 elaborately upon this subject. Sufficient unto the day, the main 
 evil thereof ! Mr. Storer, who misled the late lamented Mr. Hay, 
 and who has hoodwinked the American Government, is recalled 
 and removed, and can do no further mischief. 
 
 Once again, I say : " Let the dead past bury its dead." 
 
 Marcus Braun.