[Sidenote: A Large Element in Europe] The Slavs proper number about 125,000,000, or more than one twelfth of the total population of the world. They have been concentrated, until the recent migration began, in the eastern and larger part of Europe. They make up the bulk of Russia, the great Slav power (numbering about 70,000,000), and of the Balkan States, and form nearly half of the population of Austria-Hungary. The various Slavic languages and dialects are closely related but differ as do German and Swedish, so that the different races cannot understand each other.[62] [Illustration: COUNTRIES FROM WHICH THE SLAVS COME] [Sidenote: The Slavs in the Mines] The Slav immigration is of comparatively recent date. Before 1880 it was unnoticeable. A small number of Bohemians and Poles had come, settling in the larger cities. But suddenly the thousands began to pour in. Demand for cheap labor in the coal fields of Pennsylvania drew this class, and presently the American, Canadian, English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, and German mine-workers found themselves being supplanted by the men from Austria-Hungary and Russia--men who were mostly single and alone, who could live on little, eat any sort of food, wear any kind of clothes, and sleep in a hut or store-house, fourteen in a room. Of course the home of the English-speaking miner, with its carpet on the best room, its pictures and comforts, had to go, as did the miner and his wife and children, also the school and the church--for how could these stay when the Slav, homeless and familyless, could bunk in with a crowd anywhere, or build himself a hillside hut out of driftwood, and subsist on from four to ten dollars a month. The one conspicuous thing about the Slav was his ability to save money. Dr. Warne gives a graphic and pathetic picture of the struggle caused by the introduction of the Slavs into Pennsylvania, and his investigations may profitably be studied.[63] [Sidenote: Slav domination]