the Protestants, the Congregational Church has a following of about 500 and is the largest Congregational pastorate in the State of Virginia. There is also a large Presbyterian congregation of about 200, and a Lutheran Church with about half this number. Here and there are also found a few families of Slavs who are Methodists.
PRIDE OF RACE AMONG SLAVS IN VIRGINIA.
Recently the people of Petersburg and vicinity were suddenly made aware of the maturity of the south-side Virginia colony by a prompt and publicly expressed resentment of a possibly unintentional slur cast at the Slavs by a visiting speaker who was understood to class the Slavs as undesirable immigrants for the South. This incident, with almost lightning rapidity, solidified the several Slavish elements in the colony, and their leaders immediately demanded recognition of their fitness as agricultural settlers. The response to this demand was highly flattering to the Slavs and remarkable for the promptness and forcefulness with which it was made.
In a public statement issued by one of the prominent members of the Bohemian colony in Prince George County, a member of the county school board, it was asserted that—
This slur at the Slavs is certainly undeserved as is evidenced by their character, industry, and their acceptableness which are demonstrated beyond contradiction by the local immigrant colony, which is composed, be it known, almost entirely of Bohemians and Slovaks (both Slavish people).
Continuing, the statement argued:
These people have been coming to the local counties for the past 25 years; they have taken up farms abandoned by native Virginians and have brought them to a very high degree of cultivation and productiveness; they hold an envied reputation for honesty and good citizenship—there is not a merchant in Petersburg who will not attest to their strict integrity in all business and financial transactions.
More than this, they have been recognized by the native Virginians. In Prince George County, for example, a Bohemian born in Europe was recently elected a member of the board of county commissioners, while other members of the colony hold important public offices.
Leading southern economists, among others, are now contending that the problems of immigration, as far as the South is concerned at the present time, are those of an internal redistribution rather than an assisted foreign immigration. The speaker, judging from his statements, apparently does not hold this view; and he utterly fails to take into consideration the primary cause underlying the movement of immigrants to this country, the labor element in the industrial organization of the North and the Middle West, and the life ambition of the Slavish people in America—a people who are lovers of the land, and whose life object is to be landowners.
What the South needs more than an increased railroad traffic is the redevelopment in the breasts of her people of loyalty to the high ideals of right, individual liberty, and the honorableness of unselfish, constructive public service. The new citizens who come to live in the South must respond to these ideals. They must come to be southerners, and in being southerners, to be truly Americans; they must come, accepting established institutions; and must join in the national life of the South as home makers and as guardians of the integrity of the white race.
By actual demonstration the Bohemians and their Slavish brothers have proved that with proper treatment, and when accepted as men at a man’s worth, they can measure up to these requirements.
The Index-Appeal, the leading daily newspaper at Petersburg, promptly replied editorially to this strongly worded and highly idealistic statement under date of January 25, 1914, in part as follows:
