Joseph hesitated for a while and was on the verge of making his empire a federal structure with equal rights for all races, but instead of that he put into effect a compromise by means of which he pacified the Magyars and sacrificed all the rest. He divided his empire into two parts. In the Austrian half of it the German minority was made the ruling race, while the Hungarian half with its Slav and Ruman majority, was turned over to the Magyars.
A few figures will show the galling injustice of this arrangement. But before Austrian official statistics are cited, it is necessary to mention that they are notoriously biased in favor of the two ruling races. In 1910 the racial figures for the Austrian half of the monarchy were as follows:
|
Germans
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
9,950,266 |
|
Bohemians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
6,435,983 |
|
Poles
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
4,967,984 |
|
Little Russians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
3,608,844 |
|
Slovenians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
1,252,940 |
|
Serbo-Croatians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
783,334 |
|
Italians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
768,422 |
|
Roumanians
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
|
275,115 |
The German population, which numbers only 35·58 per cent, has a majority in parliament and treats the Slavs, who number more than 60 per cent, as "minderwertig", inferior people.
In Hungary the Slavs and the Roumanians fared even worse, for the Magyars, an Asiatic race, proceeded ruthlessly to make the world Magyar and Hungarian synonymous. Everything non-Magyar was treason against the Hungarian state, and races that lived in Hungary, when the Magyars were still an unknown tribe wandering on the steppes of Central Asia, were condemned to extinction. This barbarous policy did bring results, for in 1910 the Magyars, according to their statistics, for the first time formed a bare majority of the people of Hungary. The figures for 1910 are as follows:
