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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 CanadianHungarian 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 EastCentral 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"
