Excerpted from the book: Krásná Amerika: A Study of the Texas Czechs,  1851 - 1939, by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, and published by Eakin Press, Austin, Texas, in 1983.

Finding Out About Texas

"How did the European peasant find out about Texas? There was several ways, but probably the most common was letters sent to friends and relatives. In fact, Karel Jonás, the U. S. Consul General in Vienna, stated in 1888:

'There can be no question that the emigration from this Empire is, on the whole, free and voluntary, induced undoubtedly in the great majority of cases by the favorable reports written by Austrians residing in the U. S. to friends at home.(16)' These letters from America reached not only the relatives and friends of those in America, but whole villages and regions. It was very common for letters from America to be the talk of the town, especially in the early years of the emigration. Also, newspapers such as the Moravské noviny (The Moravian News) printed these letters, informing large areas of Bohemia and Moravia about the emigrant's experience.

(16) House of Representatives, "Report of Consul-General Edmund Jussen, Vienna, 25 July 1888, 97 -98" quoted in William Philip Hewitt, "The Czechs ub Texas: A Study of Immigration and the Development of Czech Ethnicity, 1850 -1920." Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin (1978), 23." (Machann and Mendl 19 -20).

Passage to Texas

"Not only did American relatives and friends urge Czechs to come to America by their letters; they also financially supported the emigration. Jonás noted numerous cases of Czech-Austrians prepaying for the passage of friends and relatives still in Europe.(17) As Texas came to be populated by more and more European immigrants, the steamship and railroad companies foresaw an increasingly lucrative trade. Texas Czech newspapers carried advertisements to prepay passage for anyone in Europe to come to Texas. It was very simple: one only had to send the money (about $30.00) to the company and it, in turn, would send the ticket to the company's office nearest the home of the friend or relative. By 1890, 25 to 33% and by 1900, 40 to 50% of all immigrants to America were traveling on prepaid tickets. (18)

Steamship companies, land agents, and railroads all advertised Texas to Europeans, Emily Balch remembered seeing an advertisement in 1910 declaring that Galveston was the best port of entry because custom agents were less strict there.(19) Indeed, most Czechs came to Texas through the port of Galveston. The Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad published a pamphlet entitled Texas co cil stehovaní (Texas as a Destination of Immigration) in 1888 describing the soil, climate, and the crops growing in Texas. Of course, not all of the companies were especially truthful in their advertising. One steamship company had on display in Bohemia an example of what it called 'Texas soil': black top soil six feet in depth.'(20) Many immigrants were well aware that others had lost their money to all kinds of thieves and shady operators while on their way to America. the letters home and the Czech newspapers were replete with accounts of these pitfalls and advice on how to avoid them. In fact, an early Texas Czech hero was Ignác Rusek, a Czech employee of a steamship company who faithfully and honestly helped many immigrants find their way from Galveston to the inland Czech communities.(21)

(17) Quoted in Hewitt, 23.

(18) See Hewitt, 32.

(19) Emily Balch, 'Our Slavic Citizens' (New York, 1910), 80.

(20) R. W. Chervenka, 'John Kohut and his Son Josef' (Waco, 1966),
11.

(21) Nardodní svay ceskych kotoliku v Texasu, 'Nase dejinz',
(Granger, ex., 1939), 4212. Also see Hugo Chotek's novelette '
Zahuba mesta Galvestonu' in 'Amerkián národní kalendár', 1906, for a
refernce to Rusek's work as a railroad company agent. (Machann and
Mendl 21 - 22).
 

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