The heavy preponderance of Poles in certain administrative divisions of eastern Germany has, nevertheless, been unimpaired by the Polish emigration. In the province of Posen the German-speaking inhabitants still constitute the minority. As a rule Germans emigrate more readily than Poles or Masurians in East Prussia.[111] In the city of Posen, Polish nationality was asserting itself with increasing vigor year by year, before the European war. The percentage of Poles grew from about 51 in 1890 to 56 in 1900. Ten years later it exceeded 57. Correspondingly the German percentage fell from 50 in 1890 to under 42 in 1910. Posen, of all German provinces, contains the largest number of Poles. 62 per cent of its 2,100,000 inhabitants belong to this nationality. Within provincial boundaries the process of Germanizing the people has been carried on most actively in the district of Bromberg. The reason is obvious. The region is the connecting link between Germany proper and the province of Old Prussia, which forms an enclave of German speech within the territory of the Polish language. The effort to connect the ancient cradle of Prussia with the motherland is apparent in the figures which reveal the percentage of Poles in the intermediary land. The district of Bromberg numbers 53 per cent of Poles in a population of 750,000. In the provincial district of Posen, however, the percentage of Poles attains 68 for a population of 1,350,000. The German element of the province is confined mainly to the cities, the country being peopled largely by Poles. Often the proportion of this native population attains as high a figure as 91 per cent and it is rare to find it below 75 per cent. Apart from the German administration of the province, Posen thus remains Polish to the core. Its nobility and landed gentry consist mostly of Poles who have strenuously opposed German encroachments by abstaining from commercial or financial intercourse with their rulers. They founded their own banks, in order to be independent of German institutions; and by means of native agricultural associations they came to the aid of Polish farmers, who were thus saved from having recourse to German colonization banks chartered for the purpose of buying out Polish landowners. The influence of the Polish element is best shown by the fact that eleven Polish representatives are delegated by its population to the Reichstag, out of a body of fifteen sent by the province.