Oldal 114 [114]
BALÁZS VENKOVITS
distances, etc.** In their publications they tried to draw specific attention to
these issues, and this gave rise to a discursive conflict between Hungarian
anti-emigration propaganda and Canadian immigration-booster literature.
THE FIRST HUNGARIAN SETTLEMENTS AND IMMIGRATION PROPAGANDA
In his seminal study of Hungarian emigration in 1904, Gusztav Thirring
already called attention to the difficulties Hungarian emigrants could
experience in Canada:
Although the Canadian government offers such benefits to emigrants that
no other state does, as it gives a homestead of 160 acres, while hay, wood,
pasture, fishing and hunting are also available for free, Hungarians have
a miserable fate there. Our emigrants who are not familiar with the local
conditions, traditions, and language, after a long sea voyage and train journey
arrive in Quebec half looted by the agents of different shipping companies,
are transported by the employees of railway companies lurking for and living
from emigrants to Winnipeg to some 2,500 kilometers from there, as free
land is now available only in the western and northern states of British North
America; the uninformed and ignorant peasant, whose language no one
understands, fully depends on the agents of the railway companies and falls
short of the opportunity for free land choice, thus they face a dilemma: they
either accept the bad-quality land forced upon them by the railway companies
or they buy the land owned by the companies for a loan. Hungarian emigrants
are thus stuck in a no-win situation, they either settle down in an area the
climate of which they cannot stand and where the land is of poor quality or
they are doomed to fail because of an expensive land purchase.”
Thirring also noted that “[m]any people from the Alföld [Hungarian Great
Plains] emigrated to these places [i.e., new Hungarian settlements] due to
the enticing pamphlets that flooded the villages of counties by Canadian¬
Hungarian knights of industry.” As it was presented above as well, the
Canadian government started a program to encourage the immigration of
farmers and agricultural laborers, and although these primarily targeted
Britain and the United States, during the Sifton years the settlement of East¬
Central European immigrants was also believed to be advantageous (due
to their vast experience as farmers and the belief that their poverty would
38 For more information, see: M.L. Kovacs, The Saskatchewan Era, 1885-1891, in Dreisziger,
Struggle and Hope, 66-83.
39 "Thirring, A magyarországi kivándorlás, 87. Translation mine.
10 Tbid., 88.
e 112"