Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/189

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BOHEMIANS AS IMMIGRANTS
185

of Chicago, the latter being an organ of a woman’s society, printed as well as edited by women. It is not devoted to “beauty lessons” and “household hints,” but to efforts toward woman’s suffrage and the " uplifting of the mental attitude of working-women.” Its 6,000 subscribers include distinguished Bohemians all over the country, men as well as women.

In religion the Roman Catholics claim a large number of Bohemians, but there is a substantial Protestant minority; outside the church fold is the numerous and very interesting group of Free-Thinkers.

The Bohemians are among the most literate of our immigrants. Taking the data for 1900, which I happen to have worked out, we find that of immigrants of all nationalities of fourteen years and over, those not able to both read and write were 24.2 per cent.; among the Germans 5.8 per cent.; among the Bohemians and Moravians only 3.0 per cent.; among Scandinavians, under 0.8 per cent. Certainly to supply only about one-half as many illiterates per hundred as the Germans is a notable record.

All of this is quite borne out by the impression one gets of Bohemians both in the United States and in Bohemia. In development and conditions they rank with the immigrant from northwestern