In the last five years the change has been so great as to seem marvellous. Usurers have been driven out of business and the peasant's house has ceased to be a mud hut with a straw-thatched roof. In fact, that type of building has been condemned by law, at the initiative of returned immigrants.
The shopkeepers throughout the whole immigrant territory rejoice. Their stock is increased by many varieties of goods; for the peasant now wants the best there is in the market, often useless luxuries, to be sure; but while he may spend his money "for that which is not meat," he wants to spend, and that means effort, than which the Slavs as a race need nothing more for their social and political salvation.
Their advance is strikingly illustrated by the following examples.
The B. Brothers of Vienna are manufacturers of neckties. On a recent visit to their establishment I met some buyers from Hungary, one of whom, when the salesman showed him the class of goods which he had been in the habit of buying, highly coloured, stiff bows of cheap cotton, said:
"We have no use for such stuff. This is the tie we want," and he pulled out an American tie of rather fine quality and the latest pattern.
I had to promise the head of the firm of B. Brothers to put him in touch with an American haberdasher's journal, so that he may keep himself informed as to our styles.
Partly to test the influence of immigration in the remotest region of Hungary and partly to satisfy my craving for a certain kind of candy, I visited a little village hidden away in the Carpathians, where neither steam nor electricity has yet obtruded itself. There in a certain store, I bought my very first sweets, and although I have since tasted the delicacies of many civilizations, the lingering flavour of that first candy still seems the most delicious, and its taste has never left my palate. It was hard, highly coloured and usually exposed to flies and dust; but it was my first love, and my first pennies were sacrificed to it; so I was eager to revel in its delights again.
I went to that village in the spirit of one who goes on a pilgrimage, and as one seeks one's favourite shrine so did I seek that little store. My palate's memory led me to the very door; but in front of it, forcing itself upon my candy-hungry gaze, was a penny in the slot machine, out of which, in response to two Hungarian Filers, came dropping a stick of genuine American chewing-gum. It is needless to say that my primitive, highly-coloured candy was no more. In its place were caramels and buttercups very much like those I had left behind me in the United States.