Our Slavic Fellow Citizens - 1910

Slovak Emigration
Chapter VI

Modern conditions have greatly militated against these old Slovak methods of eking out an existence. Russia, Germany and France, which with the near East home were among the chief markets, have passed laws or laid taxes which shut out the Drotars and the rest, and cheap factory products have underbid them.

More modern forms of temporary employment take men to neighboring districts for harvest and other agricultural work, or to the cities for building or factory labor. In the years when Budapest was making its most rapid growth many masons, carpenters and others went, as they put it, "to build Pest," and the slackening of this work is said to have been one cause of increased emigration to America.

Factories about Budapest and Pressburg now give employment to considerable numbers, but unfortunately, in the Slovak counties themselves, in spite of minerals, water power and cheap labor, industry is very little developed. Where it does exist it tends to keep men at home since it supplies the ready money which is so needed and of which agriculture yields so little.