What irony that these peasants, straight from ox-goad and furrow, should come to constitute, so far as we can judge from official figures, three-fifths of the force in sugar refining, two-fifths of the force in meat-packing, three-eighths of the labor in tanneries and in oil refineries, one-third of the coal-miners and of the iron- and steel-workers, one-fourth of the workers in carpet-mills, and one-fifth of the hands in the clothing trade! On the other hand, they are but one-seventh of the labor force in the glass-factories and in the cotton-mills, one-ninth of the employees in copper-mining and smelting (who are largely Finns), one-twelfth of our railway labor, and only a handful in the silk and woolen industries. For these manful Slavs, no work is too toilsome and dangerous. Their fatalistic acceptance of risk has much to do with the excessive blood-cost of certain of our industries. They are not "old clo'" men, junk-dealers, hucksters, peddlers, and snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, as are some of the people among us. They have no nose for the small, parasitic trades, but with a splendid work courage they tackle the heavy, necessary tasks. Large of body, hard-muscled, and inexpert in making his head save his heels, the Slav inevitably becomes the unskilled laborer in the basic industries. Unlike the Teutons and Scandinavians of the eighties, whose chief location was the country beyond Chicago, the later Slavs have been drawn to Pennsylvania, in the hard-coal fields and the Pittsburgh district, and thence they have spread to the rising mining and metal-working centers throughout the country. So many are single men that they form an extraordinarily mobile labor force, willing to go anywhere for an extra two cents an hour. Although they do not build homes, and hence are dependent upon such housing as they can find, they do not stagnate in slums, save as the conditions of their employment impose congestion.