Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

2. Towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) before 1918

Occupational composition of towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary)

The changes in industry were indicated by the increase in the proportion of large-scale industrial works, which meant factories with more than 20 employees. Liptó [Liptov] County, where 1.43% of all factories were large-scale works belonging to this group, was outstanding from this point of view in the whole country. The counties following it were also in Felvidék (Upper Hungary): Zólyom [Zvolen] (1.4%) and Szepes [Spis] (1.3%). There were such factories in the textile and paper industries. We can also find examples of factories employing more than a thousand people in Felvidék (Upper Hungary), including the counties Zólyom [Zvolen] (1.4%) and Szepes [Spis] (1.3%), but, for the sake of completeness, we also have to mention the villages that had such largescale factories: Ruttka (Vrútky), Lopér (Podbrezová), Nagysurány (Šurany) and Korompa (Krompachy).

In Liptó County the number of the people working in the construction industry increased particularly rapidly. The reason for this was that a lot of people worked in Budapest.

The transformation of the economic structure is indicated by the fact that the number of those employed in mining decreased in the whole country. An example for this is Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica), where the percentage of the people working in mining decreased from 35.5% to 25.8%, i.e. from 5,808 to 3,919 people, between 1900 and 1910. Miners either moved away or found jobs in industry. This process was one reason for the decrease in the population of Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica).

The important role that towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) played in industry and trade can be seen in Table 6, which shows that, with their higher proportions, these towns are different from the national average for Hungary at that time.

Table 6. Proportions of people employed in mining and industry, transportation and trade, out of all workers in the towns of Hungary in 1910,

%

Mining and industry

Transportation and trade£

Municipal boroughs

37.7

16.3

54.0

Excluding Budapest:

3.6

13.6

45.2

Towns

29.2

10.2

39.4

‘Northern’ Felvidék towns

38.2

12.2

50.4

‘Southern’ Felvidék towns

37.9

12.9

50.8

Source: ibid

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