Without calling in question the worth of the Slavic race, one may note that the immigrant Slavs have small reputation for capacity. Many observers, after allowing for their illiteracy and lack of opportunity, still insist that they have little to contribute to our people. "These people haven't any natural ability to transmit," said a large employer of Slavs. "You may grind and polish dull minds all you want to in the public schools, but you never will get a keen edge on them because the steel is poor." "They aren't up to the American grade," insisted the manager of a steel-works. "We have a 'suggestion box,' and we reward valuable suggestions from our men, but precious few ever come from immigrant labor." The labor agent of a great implement-works rates the immigrant 75 in ability as compared with the American. A Bohemian leader puts his people above the Americans in music and the fine arts, but concedes the superiority of the Americans in constructive imagination, organizing ability, and tenacity of purpose. "The Czechs," he says, "are strong in resistance but are not aggressive." A steel-town superintendent of schools finds the bulk of the children of the Slavs "rather sluggish intellectually." They do well in the lower grades, where memory counts most; but in the higher grades, where association is called for, they fall behind. Of 23,000 pupils of non-English-speaking fathers, 43.4 per cent. were found to be behind their grade; the percentage of retardation for the children of Bohemian fathers was only 35.6 per cent.; but for Poles, the retardation was 58.1 per cent., and for Slovaks 54.5 per cent. While this showing is poor, there are good school men who stoutly maintain that it is still too soon to judge what the Slav-American can do. THE ALARMING PROSPECT OF SLAVIC IMMIGRATION An outflow of political exiles comes to an end when there is a turn of the political wheel; but a stream squeezed out by population pressure may flow on forever. So long as the birth-rate remains high, the mother-country is not depleted by the hemorrhage. "What has been the effect of emigration to America upon conditions in Bohemia?" I asked of an intelligent Czech. "Bohemia," he replied, with emphasis, "is just as crowded to-day; the struggle is just as hard as if never a Bohemian had left for America." "Will Polish emigration remain large?" I asked a leader of the Polish-Americans. "Yes," he replied, "it will continue for a long time. The Poles multiply at an extreme rate, and there is no room for them to expand in Poland."