Submenu Categories--------SELECT ARTICLE Historical Timeline A Short History The Old Country Coming to America The First Churches The Struggle for Recognition Renewed Efforts to Organize A Greek Catholic Bishop Comes to America The Episcopacy of Bishop Basil Tackach The Episcopacy of Bishop Daniel Ivancho The Episcopacy of Bishop Nicholas T. Elko A Change in Status Results in Two Eparchies New Honor; New Bishops and A New Eparchy The First Metropolitan The Episcopate of Bishop Michael J. Dudick The Eparchy of Parma The Byzantine Catholic Church in the West: The Eparchy of Van Nuys The Church in Transition Looking to the Future

By the latter decades of the 19th century, the already marginal economic situation of the Carpatho-Rusin people had become even more precarious. The old peasant way of life, which in the best of times provided an ability to eke out only a meager living, irreparably broke down under the strain of a changing economy.

The old peasant economy, based upon feudal notions of barter and service, was replaced by a modern cash economy. Having no money, Carpatho-Rusin peasants found themselves strapped to purchase basic necessities and to pay ever increasing taxes.
The lack of available land also increased the economic plight of the Carpatho-Rusin populace. Although serfdom was officially abolished in 1848, the ownership of the land remained concentrated in the hands of the ruling Austro-Hungarian aristocracy. The Carpatho-Rusin people, while no longer serfs, were forced to continue to work under the same aristocratic landlords as poorly paid and/or indebted agricultural laborers.

With the advent of new labor-saving machines produced by the factories of the Industrial Revolution, modern farming techniques were introduced. The need for the agrarian labor supplied by the Carpatho-Rusin peasantry decreased drastically. Having no manufacturing or heavy industries located in their own region to fall back on, the now surplus agricultural work force could not be absorbed into the local economy.

The economic pressures upon the Carpatho-Rusin people were further exacerbated by their practices with their own limited land holdings. Land was passed down not by a system of primogeniture where the eldest son inherited all of his father's estate, but rather was subdivided among all of the male children. As the Carpatho-Rusin population grew, the limited land holdings, often minuscule to begin with, were so continually subdivided into such tiny plots that they could no longer support the basic needs of their owners.
Beset by a changing and depressed economy, overpopulation and a lack of available and productive land, the Carpatho-Rusins sank deeper and deeper into poverty with no immediate hope of improvement in their situation. Faced with these grim prospects, the Carpatho-Rusins could look to improve their fortunes only by emigrating abroad.

Word of the opportunities to be had in America began to spread throughout southern and eastern Europe by the 1880's. Not only were Carpatho-Rusin peasants encouraged to leave with letters received from relatives and neighbors already in America earning dollars, but also by steamship agents and recruiters of the rapidly growing American industries. The recruiters traveled from village to village in search of cheap labor. Not surprisingly, their message of readily available land and steady employment at substantially higher wages found a receptive audience among the impoverished Carpatho-Rusin people. Before long, the exodus of economically destitute Carpatho-Rusin peasants in search of economic improvement in America began.

For the most part, the journey westward to America for the average Carpatho-Rusin peasant took a common course. After a heart-wrenching goodbye with weeping loved ones and a final blessing under the wayside cross at the head of the village, the prospective immigrant traveled either by horse- drawn cart or on foot to the nearest major city. From there, the immigrant boarded a train for transport to a faraway coastal port where he or she would embark by ship for the journey to America.

The Carpatho-Rusin immigrants who lived in the counties of Szepes (Spiš), Sáros (Šariš), Zemplén (Zemplin), Ung (Už), Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramoroš (Marmaros) departed for America from two different routes. One route was from the North Sea ports of Bremen and Hamburg in Germany; the other route was from the ports of Trieste and Fiume on the Adriatic Sea.

Arranging for overseas travel for immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a large scale enterprise. Two companies shared control over this lucrative passenger trade. They were the Cunard Lines and the Hamburg-Amerika Line. It is likely that the Carpatho-Rusin immigrants traveled in steerage class to America on such ships as Hamburg's "Berengaria" or Cunard's "Pannonia" or "Carpathia."