With such a background, effective organization was very difficult and the Czechs, although they signed a definite agreement with the representatives of the Carpatho-Ukrainians to grant the country as much autonomy as was consistent with the unity of the state, did not hurry themselves to apply this. On the contrary, they took the attitude that the people would fall of necessity under the control of the Hungarians and the Jews if they were allowed to handle their own affairs, and they sent large numbers of Czechs into the area to carry on the essential government services. There was at times a Carpatho-Ukrainian governor but his powers were severely limited by the Czech officials who surrounded him. At the same time the Czechs opened large numbers of schools in the area and they did much to spread literacy among the population. It is certain that during the first ten years of Czech control, the people of the area were far better off than at any time under Hungary. Yet the improving conditions could not fail to increase the national consciousness of the people. It was the Czech hope that when a new generation, educated in Prague, came into the important offices of the region, they would be completely satisfied with their position in Czechoslovakia and that any separatist feelings would be assuaged. The increase of literacy had another effect upon the people. In the past many had been content to talk their own dialect without any thought of grammatical accuracy. Village differed from village and there were the same differences that had appeared earlier throughout Ukraine when the first writers were adopting and working out literary Ukrainian. It became evident that the old ambiguous situation would pass away. The children in school read Shevchenko and Franko and the other Ukrainian authors and the general trend was to develop Carpatho-Ukraine along the same general lines. This displeased many of those people who had a sentimental attachment to Russian. They tended to gravitate toward the use of true Great Russian and many of them fell under Communist influence. Thus, the period between the Wars was one largely of intensifying the national feeling in the country and one of considerable material and intellectual improvement and development. On the whole there were relatively few of those disorders which had marked the liquidation of the Republic of Western Ukraine by Poland. Yet tensions continued to increase, especially after 1925 when the reforms in Hungary by Jeremiah Smith, acting as financial representative of the League of Nations, forced the return to the area of many of the former Hungarian-sympathizing Carpatho-Ukrainians who had been able to establish themselves in white collar jobs in Hungary. They tried to recover their old position in the community but were prevented by the Czech authorities, and so they began an underground campaign to win the country over to its former rulers.