The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 1/Enthusiasm grows

ENTHUSIASM GROWS.

 

Before the war no one acquainted with the Bohemian people in this country would have believed the assertion that a hundred thousand dollars could be collected by them in a few months for any purpose, however worthy. Constant complaints were made by Bohemian journalists, public speakers, preachers and others that the Bohemian immigrant in America adopted for his working philosophy materialism pure and simple, that all he is interested in is to make money, buy a house, put away a few mortgages, that nothing can move him except self-interest. Seven years ago a campaign was under taken to collect a million pennies as a gift of Czechs in America for the support of Bohemian common schools in Bohemian and Moravian towns controlled by the Germans. Although most of the Bohemian publications in this country supported this campaign, it took more than a year to collect ten thousand dollars from half a million people.

What a contrast is presented by the record of the past three months. Bazaars in three cities alone netted about ninety thousand dollars. Reference was made in a previous issue to the fair of the Czechs in New York, held before Christmas, the proceeds of which amounted to $23,000. Chicago, jealous of its primacy among the Bohemian settlements in America, made a determined effort to beat that figure, and in an eight-day bazaar held in the first days of March earned a sum which is at present estimated at $40,000. Of course, Chicago should have done still better compared to New York, be cause nearly three times as many Bohemians live in Chicago as in New York. Chicago workers urge several good reasons, why they did not make at least seventy thousand, the chief reason being that they could not get a hall large enough to admit all who came to spend money.

But after all Cleveland is entitled to the place of honor among the rival “Bohemian” cities of the United States. Its Bohemian speaking population is about as large as that of New York, but is more scattered and the hall they had to use for their fair, which was held in the middle of March, was very unsatisfactory. Yet they beat New York by a fair margin, the net proceeds being according to the latest figures over thirty thousand.

This does not express the full measure of cheerful giving which has been such a remarkable feature in the life of Bohemian immigrants in America during the last two years. The few hundred Czechs in San Francisco with their three thousand dollar bazaar still hold the record for generosity among the many similar undertakings of the past winter. And the little Czech colony in Boston, numbering about fifty families and having to its credit gifts exceeding five thousand dollars, demonstrates clearly the new discovery that the Bohemian immigrant in his chase after the dollar has not lost all ideals and that he is still capable of self-sacrifice.