Living a simple life, the average Serbian needs little money. One dollar in Serbia is equal to five dollars here. If a farmer enters trade, he is thought to be going down in the world. He may enter banking or life insurance with no discredit, but the shopkeepers of the country are largely foreigners. In all Serbia there are hardly two-score millionaires. Serbian women are good housewives and do much of their own work. Serbians, in general, are too independent to be servants; and the latter are largely Austrians. Government employees in Serbia are natives. Young Serbians also are educated for the church, the army, for law, and for school teaching. Young men intended for the army generally study in France, for scientific work in Germany, for the church in Russia. Many young Serbians, too, have studied in Switzerland and in Belgium. Thus, Serbian society as a whole is sympathetic with foreign countries.
Of the four million inhabitants of Serbia proper, the larger number belong to the Orthodox Greek Church, but there are also a good many Roman Catholics and some Moslems. Though their life is in general very simple, Serbians are not wholly untouched by modern progress. Many towns have electric lights and telephones, and electric trams are by no means unknown. Serbia has rich mineral resources, which the State is undertaking to develop. Among their manufactures is a remarkable wool carpet and a certain kind of coarse linen. Though they have a fairly large output of silk, silk fabrics as well as finer textiles are imported. A man who has a salary of three thousand dollars is an exception, and considered very prosperous. Salaries of cabinet ministers hardly exceed this sum, and court life does not tend to any magnificence.
Serbians marry young. There is little illegitimacy in the country and infrequent divorce. They have been called automatically eugenic--on account of their strict marriage laws forbidding marriage under certain degrees of relationship. The Serbians are a domestic people, devoted to their children; hence, the present condition of the country is especially tragic.
The people of Serbia have the greatest admiration for Americans, and for the independence and political ideas of America.