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Title: The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Author: Edward A. Steiner
Release Date: July 15, 2014 [EBook #46294]
Language: English
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THE IMMIGRANT TIDE
ITS EBB AND FLOW
EDWARD A. STEINER'S
Studies of Immigration
_The Broken Wall_
Stories of the Mingling Folk. Illustrated net $1.00
"A big heart and a sense of humor go a long way toward making a
good book. Dr. Edward A. Steiner has both these qualifications and
a knowledge of immigrant's traits and character."--_Outlook._
_Against the Current_
Simple Chapters from a Complex Life. 12mo, cloth, net $1.25
"As frank a bit of autobiography as has been published for many a
year. The author has for a long time made a close study of the
problems of immigration, and makes a strong appeal to the
reader."--_The Living Age._
_The Immigrant Tide--Its Ebb and Flow_ Illustrated, 8vo, cloth, net
$1.50
"May justly be called an epic of present day immigration, and is a
revelation that should set our country thinking."--_Los Angeles
Times._
_On the Trail of the Immigrant_
7th Edition. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.50
"Deals with the character, temperaments, racial traits, aspirations
and capabilities of the immigrant himself. Cannot fail to afford
excellent material for the use of students of immigrant
problems."--_Outlook._
_The Mediator_
A Tale of the Old World and the New. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.25
"A graphic story, splendidly told."--ROBERT WATCHORN, _Former
Commissioner of Immigration_.
_Tolstoy, the Man and His Message_
A Biographical Interpretation
_Revised and enlarged._ Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.50
[Illustration: A CZAR IN EMBRYO
Southern Slavic chief, who exchanged his symbols of authority for pick
and shovel at "Guinea Hill."]
THE
IMMIGRANT TIDE
ITS EBB AND FLOW
EDWARD A. STEINER
_Professor in Grinnell College, Iowa_
_Author of "On the Trail of the Immigrant," etc._
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1909, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 No. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
_To
Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Henry,
Americans:
In whom blend all the nobler
strains which made the past
illustrious, and who are
awake to the peril and the
opportunities of the hour,
This book is
cordially inscribed_
PREFACE
"Put your hand on this cable," the captain said; and a dozen hands
grasped it before it sank back into the sea. Our fingers felt no thrill
or shock, for we had touched only the incasing insulation. Then the
captain told its length, stretching along the ocean's depths, its weight
and cost; but the figures falling upon our ears roused no emotions; for
they gave no idea of the cable's value to society.
On shore we were taken into a dark chamber and there saw flashes of
light, which lived but a moment; yet each spark was a letter, holding
some hidden meaning, revealing some vital truth. Here the imagination
was stirred and the mighty significance of the cable comprehended.
There are two ways in which to reveal the import of those vital
connections between the continents, as established by the immigration of
European peoples to America. One way is to record its volume, measure
its fluctuations, classify the different groups and statistically
determine the value of this movement to them; to trace the effect upon
its sources and its significance to the country which receives them.
The state of New York and the government of the United States, through
their Immigrant Commissions, have attempted to do this from the
statistical standpoint with material gathered by observers, more or less
skilled. The difficulties involved in this method are very great,
especially if the result is to furnish a test of the desirability of one
race or nationality over another, or determine its value to our
civilization. A race may be homogeneous in its historical or racial
consciousness, but heterogeneous in its cultural development. This is
true of the Slavs, the Latins and the Semitic peoples who make up the
bulk of our immigrant population.
Not only is there a number of well defined racial groups, but each group
needs to be sub-divided, and those subdivisions in turn have many
divisions; for every mountainside has its own traditions and each valley
holds different ideals. For instance: I know of one Slav village in
Hungary in which illegitimacy is unknown; yet within two or three miles
there is a village in which it is the rule rather than the exception. I
know some villages in the Carpathians, so remote from civilization that
the inhabitants have not yet learned how to make bread with yeast, and I
know other villages in the same locality in which are culinary artists
who make a cake having national fame.
A man may be a Polish peasant and be a semi-barbarian or he may be on
the same cultural level as the German "bauer" at his best.
The statistical method is of value; but it must be exceedingly
painstaking, and even then I doubt that it can serve in all cases the
purpose for which it is intended.
I have therefore chosen the second, the interpretative method. It sees
the sparks in the dark room, it interprets the flying flame and feels
the influences on both sides of the sea. It crosses and recrosses the
ocean with these human cables which bind together the continents; it
listens to their stories and records them, hesitatingly draws
conclusions and undogmatically tries to teach some lessons.
In the first part of my book I have tried to show the influences of the
returned immigrant upon his peasant home and his social and national
life. In the second part I interpret the relation of various races to
our institutions, their attitude towards them and their influence upon
them.
In all I have told, I have aspired to be an interpreter and not an
enumerator; a mediator and not a critic; I have desired to create
contacts and not divisions; to disarm prejudice and not give it new
weapons.
In this book, as in all the others I have written, I am indebted to my
wife; not only for doing all the tedious tasks such work involves, but
also for inspiration and the creation of an atmosphere in which I could
write in superlative terms of American ideals.
I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the editors of the _Outlook_ and
the _Review of Reviews_ in permitting me to reprint portions of this
book.
I heartily thank the Y. M. C. A. of Pennsylvania and Mr. E. B. Buckalew,
its efficient State Secretary, for the opportunity to gather material in
that state and in Europe; the young men who made up the Pennsylvania
Expedition for the Study of Immigration, who were helpful, joyous
comrades, and the trustees of Grinnell College, Iowa, for a generous
leave of absence.
E. A. S.
_Grinnell, Iowa,
August, 1909._
CONTENTS
PART I
WITH THE OUTGOING TIDE
I. "THEY THAT GO OUT IN SHIPS" 15
II. THE PRICE THEY PAY 34
III. A MURDERER, MARY AND AN HONORARY DEGREE 46
IV. REFLEX INFLUENCES 62
V. OUR CRITICS 77
VI. THE DOCTOR OF THE KOPANICZE 93
VII. "MOSCHELE AMERIKANSKY" 102
VIII. "NOCH IST POLEN NICHT VERLOREN" 112
IX. THE DISCIPLES IN THE CARPATHIANS 124
X. THE GUSLAR OF RAGUSA 138
XI. WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES 152
XII. "THE HOLE FROM WHICH YE WERE DIGGED" 165
PART II
WITH THE INCOMING TIDE
XIII. PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 185
XIV. THE SLAV IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM 203
XV. THE SLAV IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 215
XVI. FROM EPHRATA TO WHISKEY HILL 227
XVII. FROM THE LOVCZIN TO GUINEA HILL 242
XVIII. THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN 259
XIX. THE JEW IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM 276
XX. FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO THE GHETTO 290
XXI. FROM LAKE SKUTARI TO LAKE CHAUTAUQUA 300
XXII. THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AND THE IMMIGRANT 311
XXIII. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT 329
XXIV. FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS 348
APPENDIX I (Classification of the New Immigrant Groups) 359
APPENDIX II (Net Immigration to the United States 1899-1908) 362
APPENDIX III (Industrial Depression and Immigration) 364
APPENDIX IV (Suggested Changes in Immigration Laws) 366
INDEX 368
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Facing page_
A CZAR IN EMBRYO _Title_
DIRTY MARY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION 50
TRIEST 62
A CONTRAST IN HOMES 71
THE MARKET SQUARE IN CRACOW 112
AT THE FOOT OF THE TATRA MOUNTAINS 135
COAST OF DALMATIA 138
WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES AND NOW DROPS DOLLARS 158
TWO TYPES OF POLES 207
RUTHENIANS 224
THE SLAVIC HOME IN HUNGARY 236
THE SLAVIC HOME ON WHISKEY HILL 236
A JEW OF THE POORER TYPE 276
A JEW OF THE FINER TYPE 276
ALBANIANS 300
FACULTY AND AMERICAN STUDENTS AT MISSIONS-HAUS, KATTOWITZ 318
SLAVIC WOMEN 352
GENERAL AND MRS. RICIOTTO GARIBALDI AT THE
FOOT OF HIS FATHER'S MONUMENT IN ROME 356
PART I
With the Outgoing Tide
I
"THEY THAT GO OUT IN SHIPS"
"Do really nice ladies smoke cigarettes, papa?" my young daughter asked
of me perplexedly, awaiting an answer.
"No, I don't _think_ they do," I replied hesitatingly, the passing of
severe judgments not being much to my liking.
"Do really nice ladies drink whiskey?" the young interrogator continued.
This time I answered with more assurance.
"No. Really nice ladies do _not_ drink whiskey."
"But, papa dear, so many ladies in our cabin either drink or smoke, and
I think they are very nice."
My little woman is perhaps a better judge of human nature than her
Puritanized papa; for going into the smoking-room of the Italian steamer
on which we had embarked, I saw, indeed, a number of women smoking and
drinking and pretending to enjoy both, with that pharisaic air of
abandon which convinced me that they were "really nice" ladies. They
were "sailing away for a year and a day," and were celebrating their
liberation from the conventionalities of their environment by "being
quite European," as one of them expressed it.
Ladies who smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails in the smoking-room of
an ocean steamer cannot expect that the gentlemen, whose domain they
have invaded, will wait for an introduction before beginning a
conversation, and soon I was deep in the discussion of the aforesaid
cigarettes and cocktails, as pertaining to ladies who are "really nice."
One of these ladies was from "ye ancient and godly town" of Hartford,
Conn., and her revered ancestors sleep in the Center Church cemetery,
all unconscious of the fact that "The better set, to which I belong,"
quoting the descendant of the revered ancestors, "smokes and drinks and
breaks the Sabbath." "And swears?" I asked.
"No; but we do say: Dum it," she replied, inhaling the smoke as if she
were a veteran, but betraying her novitiate by the severe attack of
coughing which followed.
"Well, I am not up to it, quite," she remarked. "You see I didn't begin
till my senior year in college, and gave it up during the earlier years
of my married life."
Then I, a college professor, who has lived these many deluded years in
the belief that not even his senior boys smoked, except perhaps when no
one was looking--gasped and became speechless. Seeing me so easily
shocked, she tried to shock me more by telling tales of social
depravity, of divorces, remarriages and more divorces, of which she had
one; until my speechlessness nearly ended in vocal paralysis.
I did not find my voice again until a gentleman from Boston who "never
drank in Boston," but who, it seemed, departed from that custom to an
alarming degree on shipboard, helped me to recover my lost organ, by
launching forth into a tirade against the immigrant, that ready
scapegoat for all our national sins.
Upon the immigrant the Boston man laid the blame for the degeneration of
America and the Americans.
"What can you expect of our country with this scum of the earth coming
in by the million? Black Hands, Socialists, and Anarchists? What can you
expect?
"The Sabbath is broken down by them as if it had never been a day of
rest. They drink like fish, they live on nothing----" and he went on
with his contradictory statements until the well-known end, in which he
saw our country ruined, our flag in the dust, liberty dethroned and the
Constitution of the United States trampled under the feet of these
infuriated Black Hands, Socialists and Anarchists.
Through the open door from the steerage below came the murmur of voices
from a thousand or more passengers, crowded in their narrow space, too
narrow for even scant comforts; yet in the murmur were long, cheerful
notes.
A mixture of sounds it was. Weird snatches of songs from the Greeks, the
mandatory call of the Italian lotto players who seem never to tire of
their half innocent gambling, and the deep, guttural notes of various
Slavic groups, telling the story of the hard fight for money in the
strange country.
Above these sounds came the wailing notes of a lonely violin, played by
an Hungarian gypsy, who was artist, vagabond, business man, beggar and
thief. His playing was intended to lure pennies out of the pockets of
the poor; failing in that, he meant to help himself. It would not have
been the steerage if the voices of children had not been heard in all
their crescendos and diminuendos; nor, indeed, would it have been the
steerage if bitter cries had not come from those who could not restrain
their grief, although long ago they had ceased to be children. This ship
carried not a few such, who had left our land beaten by many stripes;
poor and sick and ready to die.
A Boston man who has once broken through his icy crust, especially if
that crust be melted by hot drink, can speak long and unctuously, and
my wrath had time to gather, and grow thick as a cloud around my brain.
Even before he had quite finished speaking, I blurted out in very
unacademic language:
"I'll bet you five dollars, that among the thousand steerage passengers
on this ship, you will not find one woman who smokes cigarettes, drinks
cocktails, has had a divorce or contemplates having one."
It was a reckless challenge to make, but my wrath was kindled.
Confusion was added to my anger, however, when the man from Boston said,
with a reproachful glance: "I am no sport and I don't bet. I am a
church-member." Then he called for another cocktail, and I sought the
lower deck, over which hung the afterglow of a sunset, rare on the
Northern Atlantic, even in June.
The noises on the steerage deck had almost ceased. Most of the children
were in their bunks, the lotto players found the light too dim to read
the numbers on their cards, the gypsy fiddler continued to wail out
lamentations on his instrument; while the Greeks squatted
unpicturesquely on the very edge of the forecastle, watching the waves.
No doubt the gentle, bluish green held some distant promise of the glory
of their Mediterranean.
As I descended the steps I looked into a sea of faces, friendly faces,
all. To my "Buon Giorno," there was a chorus of "How do you do?" from
Slavs, Latins and Greeks alike, and in but a few moments there was a
rather vital relation established between the man from the cabin and the
men in the steerage.
That is to me a perpetual wonder; this opening of their lives to the
inquisitive eyes of the stranger. Why should they so readily disclose to
me all their inmost thoughts, tell me of what they left behind, what
they carry home and what awaits them? There is no magic in this, even as
there is no effort. All I am sure of is that I want to know--not for the
mere knowing, but because somehow the disclosure of a life is to me
something so sacred, as if knowing men, I learned to know more of God.
Of all the pleasures of that journey; those starry,
never-to-be-forgotten nights, the phosphorescent path across the sea;
the moonlit way from the deeps to the eternal heights, the first dim
outlines of the mighty coasts of Portugal and Spain; Capri and Sorrento
in the setting of the Bay of Naples--above them all, is the glory of the
first opening of strange, human hearts to me, when "How do you do," from
that gentle chorus of voices answered my "Buon Giorno."
"What's your name?" I turned to a friendly Calabrian whose countrymen
had encircled me and one after another we had shaken hands.
"My name Tony."
"Have you been a long time in America?"
"Three year," he answered in fairly good English, while a friendly smile
covered his face.
"Where have you been?"
"Tshicago, Kansas, Eeleenoy, Oheeo."
In pretty nearly every place where rails had to be strung in that vast,
encircling necklace of steel; where powder blasts opened the hidden
fissures of the rocks; wherever his sinuous arm could exchange its
patient stroke for American dollars.
"Do you like America?"
"Yes!" came a chorus of voices. "Yes!" And the faces beamed.
"Why are you going back?" And I looked into the face of a man whom no
one would have taken for an Italian, but who, too, was from Calabria.
"Mia padre and madre is in Calabria. They are old. I am going home to
work in the field."
"How long have you been in America?"
"Twelve years." That accounts for the changed look.
"Where do you live?"
"In Connecticut. Among the Yankees."
"Do you like the Yankees?"
"Yes," and his smile grew broader. "Yes, good men; but they drink too
much whiskey--make head go round like wheel. Then Yankee get crazy and
swear." And he shook his head, this critic of ours, who evidently did
not believe that "really nice" ladies or even "really nice" gentlemen
should drink whiskey, overmuch.
"Why do you go back?" And this time it was a diminutive Neapolitan whom
I addressed. His face wore a beatific smile.
"Him sweetheart in Neapoli." Some one ventured the information, and
confusedly he acknowledged his guilt, while everybody laughed. He was
going home to marry Pepitta and when times grew better they would come
back to Pittsburg.
"Don't you get homesick for Neapoli in Pittsburg?"
"Nop," he replied. "Me citizen, American citizen," he repeated with
proud emphasis.
"What is your name?" I asked as I shook hands with my fellow citizen who
had foresworn his allegiance to the King of Italy and plighted it to
Uncle Sam.
Proudly he pulled out his papers. I looked at them and they almost
dropped from my fingers; for they were made out to "John Sullivan." When
he saw my astonishment he said: "I change name. Want to be an American.
My name used to be Giovanni Salvini."
At the edge of the ever-increasing circle I saw my friends, the Slavs,
and I reached out my hand to them. It was grasped a dozen times or more,
by Poles, Slovenes and "Griners," as they are called, because they come
from the Austrian province of Krain. They were less cheerful than the
Italians. They were returning home because of the hard times, many of
them with empty pockets, some of them with modest savings.
There were Croatians, a few Dalmatians and many Bulgarians and Serbs,
who for some reason are the least successful among our Slavic toilers.
They were all in rags, looked pinched and half starved and told their
hard luck story with many embellishments.
A great many stalwart young fellows were going back to join the army;
for the emperor had declared amnesty to all who had left their country
before serving their term in arms. One could well afford to be patriotic
when the king forgave and when times were hard in America.
Some of the Southern Slavs had marched up in the scale of social life;
had become machinists, petty foremen and taskmasters over their own
kinsmen. They knew English fairly well and seemed to have acquired some
better things than mere bank accounts.
An old gentleman from Lorain, Ohio, was going home to die, and to die in
poverty, because the hard times struck at the roots of his business and
he was too old to labour in the mills. Another went back to claim a
fortune, and asked me for the loan of a dollar, which he would be sure
to send back as soon as his fingers touched the waiting wealth.
The circle received constant additions, for our laughter and banter
reached down to the dreary bunks, and many of their occupants came up to
listen. Women brought their half-asleep children and I drew on my stock
of sweets. Even the more reticent women talked to "the man," and told
him things glad and sad. A Polish woman was the spokesman of her group.
"We are going back to the Stary Kray (the Old Country). America ne
dobre" (not good).
"Why is it not good?"
"The air ne dobre, the food ne dobre, the houses ne dobre."
Nothing was good.
"We came to America with red cheeks, like the cheeks of summer apples,
and now look at us. We are going back looking like cucumbers in the
autumn."
Yes, their cheeks were pale and pinched and their skin wrinkled. How
could it be otherwise? They had lived for years by the coke ovens of
Pennsylvania, breathing sulphur with every breath; their eyes had rarely
seen the full daylight and their cheeks had not often felt the warm
sunlight. America "ne dobre."
And yet something must have seemed good to them; for they wore American
clothes. Long, trailing skirts, shirt-waists with abbreviated sleeves
and belts with showy buckles. All of them had children, many children of
varying sizes, and among the children not one said: "America ne dobre."
The boys had penetrated into the mysteries of baseball vernacular, and
one of them was the short-stop on his team.
When I inquired of him just what a short-stop is, he looked at me
pityingly and said: "Say, are you a greenhorn?"
I am sure if I had told him that I was a college professor, he would
have asked for my credentials.
Some of the girls, besides having gone to our public schools, belonged
to clubs, wore pins and buttons and chewed gum most viciously. All were
loath to go to the "Stary Kray."
I surely was in my element, the human element; with babies to cuddle, to
guess their ages and their weight; to watch the boisterous, half
Americanized, mysterious youth and to ask questions and answer them
among these strong, friendly men.
There was one woman who neither smiled at me nor answered my greeting;
who held her half-clothed, puny baby close to her breast, giving him his
evening meal. Other little ones, seemingly all of one age, huddled close
to the mother, who looked like a great, frightened bird hovering over
her young.
"Her man been killed in the mine," the women said, and I found no more
questions to ask her. I could only sympathize with her in her grief; for
I knew it. I knew it because I had seen her or her kind, by the hundreds
at a time, prone on the ground beside the yawning pit, claiming some
unrecognizable form as that of husband or son; often of husband and son.
I have heard the bitter wails and lamentations of a whole hillside. Out
of each hut they came, the heart-broken cries of the living over the
dead; and in that grief, the Slovak, the Polish or the Italian women
were just like the American woman, who more silently, perhaps, grieved
over her husband, the foreman of the mine. In the radiant morning he
walked away from her and home; into the mine, his tomb.
The poor Slav woman had paid the price for her American hopes and had a
right to say: "America ne dobre"; but she did not say it.
"Lift my boy!" a rather muscular, good-looking man said, in the English
of New York's East Side. He seemed a little jealous of the attention I
had paid to these strange children.
"He's the real stuff," he continued. "A genuine Yankee boy. Born on the
East Side."
"My! But he's heavy!"
"You bet he is!" the proud father exclaimed, after my only half
successful effort to lift the youngster.
"He's going to be a prize-fighter, like his daddy;" and before I
realized it I was initiated into the technicalities of the prize-ring.
My new friend proved to be an aspirant for strange honours, especially
strange when sought by a Jew. His ambition was to be a champion.
"I was the foist one," he said, "to start the fighting business among
the Jews. There's lots of 'em now."
Why was he going over? His wife, a native of Hungary, had grown homesick
for the Magyarland. She was dying of that most dreadful of all diseases,
consumption; so her Ike and little Joe were going with her to Budapest.
"Say," Ike confided, "I don't know what that Old Country is like; but
I'll be hiking back to the good old Bowery in six weeks unless I'm
mighty much mistaken."
Little Joe, with all his weight, had nestled in my arms and grown quite
affectionate. When we parted, he called me "Uncle," and I was properly
proud of being the uncle of a future champion prize-fighter of the
world.
By the time the first bugle sounded for dinner I had tasted enough of
the joys of this new fellowship; so I said good-night in four languages.
Up to the deck and to my cabin door, I could hear little Joe calling
after me in a voice like that of a lusty young rooster, "Good-night,
uncle!"
Dinner in the first cabin was fashionably quiet; for it was our first
evening meal together, and we were measuring and scanning one another
after the manner of fashionable folk, trying to decide with whom it was
safe to speak.
We reached the point of discussing the dinner and the merits of Italian
cooking; we spoke of the weather and hoped it would remain so calm and
beautiful all the way. Some of us even went so far as to ask our
neighbour if this was the first trip over, which is a rather silly
question to ask nowadays when every one has crossed the ocean a dozen
times, except a few very extraordinary people.
After dinner, as we lounged on deck, a lady, whose face I could not see,
sat down beside me and said: "You don't approve ladies' smoking, do
you?" With that, she drew from her silver case a cigarette, and put it
to her lips.
"I don't myself," she continued; "but I smoke because my whole nature is
reacting against the Connecticut Puritanism in which I have been
steeped. I don't enjoy smoking, at least my nerves don't; but my whole
self takes pleasure in it because I have been told over and over again
that I mustn't; so now I do.
"I do everything, even drink cocktails, as you have seen. I do love to
shock people."
I told her that I had grown accustomed to shocks, that I had seen
something of the world, was fairly well acquainted with the weakness of
the flesh and the power of the devil; but that I really thought it
strange that an American woman and a mother should smoke and drink. Her
daughter, a girl of about sixteen, properly gowned and coldly
indifferent, watched her mother and listened to our conversation until
her maid came and bore her away, after she had bade her mother an
unaffectionate good-night.
I suppose it was the cigarettes that made my neighbour communicative,
perhaps it was simply because she wanted to talk, that she told me her
story--a story more lamentable than I have ever heard in the steerage.
She was graduated from a college which prides itself more than most
colleges, on being an intellectual centre. Immediately after entering
society she married a man of her own set, wealthy, cultured and a
university graduate. Now, after seventeen years of married life, she had
obtained a divorce, because, as she said, they had "had enough of each
other." He had already married, and she was going to Europe to find a
husband, a man with braid and gilt buttons; preferably some one
connected with an embassy.
Several of her friends, she said, had married into that class and were
"perfectly happy."
"Foreigners are so polite," she said. "Americans, especially American
husbands, are boors. Think of nothing but business, know nothing of
music or art, and are absorbed in football, the Board of Trade and fast
horses."
I knew that this woman was not a typical American woman, nor typical of
a large class; but she was interesting as a type of many of her class
who have grown weary of Democracy and the attendant Puritanisms of
America, have crossed the seas and recrossed them, have gambled at Monte
Carlo and flirted at Budapest and Vienna, have seen the shady side of
Paris by early morning light and have become alienated from the best
there is in America.
This particular woman had broken up her home, had left a
fourteen-year-old son with his grandparents, and was about to throw
herself away on pretty nearly anything that presented itself, if it
sported brass buttons and trimmings, and had at least a Von to its name.
She belongs to a species which I have often seen in the American
quarters of European cities; but one so frank as she, I had never met.
I thought I had known something of American homes and American husbands;
but evidently I have lived in the social backwoods, for what she told me
was indeed a revelation.
In the course of the conversation we were joined by other husbandless
women who were to live abroad, although not divorced nor yet seeking
gold braid and brass buttons; by the gentleman from Boston who had
confessed to being a church-member, and by a merchant from the West who
was eager to make up a pool on the ship's run,--and before we knew it,
we were back to my proposition about the steerage.
It was the merchant from the West who said that he noticed how much
American clothing these immigrants carried back. That the men had
celluloid collars, watches and brass-bound trunks. It was the man from
Boston who said that they carried themselves so differently from those
who came over, and it was he who began to calculate how much money they
carried back, impoverishing our country and enriching theirs.
"One thing," I ventured in reply, "you have not counted and cannot
count. How much of that which is better than money they are carrying
back. Ideals filtered into their minds, new aspirations dominating their
lives, and all found in the humblest places in America.
"The steerage, as I have said before, and now say again with still more
emphasis, carries into Europe more saving ideas than the cabin. What we
bring we have borrowed from Europe and bring back in exaggerated forms.
Neither Paris nor Berlin, nor Vienna nor Monte Carlo is being blessed by
our coming or cares for us at all, but only for our dollars."
No one contradicted me and I do not think I shall be contradicted.
"Neither Europe nor America is the better for our coming or our going,"
I continued. "And you," turning to the man from Boston, "you who say
that the immigrants are to blame for our social and religious
deterioration, ask yourself what you and your class bring back to
America after a season spent on the frayed edges of the so-called social
life of Europe, with which the average American comes in contact. As for
the money the immigrants carry back, they have earned every cent of it,
and I have no doubt that we in the cabin carry more money over to Europe
than they do, and we will spend it there; and I am not so sure that we
have earned it.
"Moreover," waving aside the man from Boston who was about to interrupt
me, but I was wound up and could not run down, "they have paid a
terrible price for the money they carry home. Shall I tell you what that
price is?" And I told the story of the Slavic widow and her orphaned
brood. Then my good neighbour, the Puritan rebel, who had heartlessly
talked of her deserted home, stretched out her hand and touching mine
said: "Please don't tell us any more. You have already made me think,
and I don't want to."
Then came four bells from the bridge, and the lonely sailor watching
from the crow's nest called out: "All's well on board!"
With a sigh my Puritan rebel rose, murmuring what I alone heard:
"Sailor, that isn't so!" Then she said: "Good-night."
After that there were more cigarettes and cocktails in the smoking-room;
but one woman wasn't there.
II
THE PRICE THEY PAY
The ship's doctor was very much like other men of his profession who
choose to be knocked about from port to port, dealing out pills and
powder, when pills and powders seem of so little consequence. He was
young, inexperienced and had not yet learned half the secret of his
calling; namely, to keep his mouth shut at the proper time. At breakfast
he told us that he had eight cases of consumption in the steerage, and
that three men were about the worst he had ever seen.
He told this with the cool air of the medical man who delights in
"cases" as such. Then he told us about one of them, a Greek, who was at
the point of death, but all the time kept calling for cheese.
"Don't you give him cheese, all the cheese he wants?" cried one of the
young ladies across the table.
"No," replied the doctor; "what's the use?"
Then I looked at the young lady and she looked at me; I whispered
something to my steward, and she gave an order; and we both had
cheese--real Greek cheese for breakfast.
In the morning the steerage looks its best. The deck has been scrubbed
and so have some of the passengers. If the day promises to be fair, the
travellers unconsciously draw upon the coming joy in large draughts.
When I went down that day, I was no more among strangers. Tony greeted
me with an unusually broad smile, John Sullivan shook hands with me so
vigorously that I thought he must be the veritable John L. and the
children gathered round me, confidently awaiting their sweets. This was
truly inspiring; but it became touching when the Slavic widow said to
her brood: "The Krist-kindel comes."
In the depths of the steerage they had heard that a man from the cabin
had come down and been good to them; that he had petted the children,
luring them with sweets. And the steerage gave up its treasure of little
ones, seemingly endless in number; so that the stock of good things had
to be replenished many a time before each child had its fair and equal
share.
Truly it is "More blessed to give than to receive," yet the blessing
brings its burdens, in the disclosure of real or pretended suffering;
and the immigrants are no exception to the rule. I know now as I have
never known before, the price they pay for the dollars so safely tucked
away, which are their wealth, their power and, I trust, their
happiness.
Here is a beggarly-looking group of Bulgarians. They left their home in
the richest district of that new Balkan czardom about a year ago. I know
their village, set in the midst of acres of roses, of poppies and of
maize. Like their forefathers they lived there contentedly until
restlessness, like a disease, crept upon them. Coming from the plains in
the West, it spread its contagion over the Alps, the Carpathians and the
Macedonian hills. The men mortgaged their homes, left their wives and
children to gather the roses, the poppies and the maize, and took
passage at Triest to gather dollars in America.
On landing, they were shipped West and farther West. They travelled by
polluted rivers, and over mountains stripped of their verdure and robbed
of the wealth of their veins. They saw the refuse of the mines left like
broken trappings of war on the battle-field. They saw the glare of a
thousand flaming ovens where coal was being baked into coke, and in
their shadows they saw besmirched and bedraggled towns, now clustering,
now trailing along, now losing themselves in the darkness, and now
glowing again in the lurid light of giant flames pouring from huge
furnaces. They saw day turned into night by smoke, and night turned into
day by unquenched fires, and they knew not whether it was day or night,
or heaven or hell to which they had come. At the end of the journey they
were led into a deep ravine through which an inky river struggled, and
over which hung a cloud as immovable as if the released elements were
forming again into solids.
Twelve men were counted by some one who led them, or drove them, or
pushed them into a hut which had once been painted some dingy colour,
but now was part of the gloom around it. Other twelve men were made to
enter another hut, and so on, until all were disposed of. By signs they
were given to understand that this was home; so they spread out their
woolen coats and went to sleep. When morning came, after a breakfast of
cheap whiskey and poor bread, they were marched into the mill of a
certain corporation. It would do no good to mention the name of this
corporation, and it would do no harm. No one would be offended; for
there is no one to offend.
I have very dear friends who own stock in that company, but they just
draw dividends--they do not control the mill. The man and the men who
run it produce the dividends; they do not own the stock, certainly not
all of it. I cannot single out that corporation; it is not the only
sinner nor the chief one, and that would be its only consolation, were
it looking for anything so unpractical.
My Bulgarians saw boiling pots of metal and red-hot ingots of metal and
men of metal, who shouted at them in an unknown tongue, and the louder
they shouted the less the men understood. Little by little, however,
they grew accustomed to the tumult, and learned to walk skillfully on
the inch plank which alone separated them from death and destruction.
They found consolation in the bulging envelope full of money which came
to them at the end of the week; for it was much money, exchanged into
their currency, more money than three months' labour brought them among
the roses, the poppies and the maize.
Two-thirds of it they sent home, and lived on the other third, eating
coarse meat and bread, and indulging in strong drink. Month after month
they toiled in the mill, and lived in the same ravine, with the
thundering, spewing, belching monsters. They lost the freshness of skin
and the elasticity of movement characteristic of their race; but were
happy in the fat, bulging envelope at the end of the week.
Of the city, with its churches and its beautiful homes they had seen
nothing; for the mill ran day and night, and night and day, and Sabbath
days and Sabbath nights as well. They cared not for cities or churches
or even for fine houses, so long as they got the envelopes.
One morning, however, they came to the mill and it was silent within, as
it was silent without, and the door was closed. One week and another
they waited; but there was no envelope with money. Their own small
change was gone and they were starving. Then came the same man who had
driven them twelve by twelve into the huts, and twelve by twelve he
drove them out; for they had no money with which to pay the rent, and
men with hearts of metal cannot feel what it means to be driven out of a
hut, even such a wretched hut, and be in the roofless street.
Half-starved, the men left their miserable shelter and marched into the
main street, past the stores and the churches; and then they saw that
the city had homes and that not all the men had hearts of metal.
Bread came in abundance, and soup and meat. Fine women were proud to
serve them, and the basement of the church became their lodging place.
On Sunday they heard above them the voices of little children, and then
deep organ tones and a man's voice speaking loud enough for them to
hear, although they could not understand. Then came a great volume of
song, and if the congregation sang: "The Church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ, her Lord," poetry never was more true to fact; for the
church seemed buttressed upon these Slavic brothers of Jesus, in whom,
as in all the needy, He incarnates Himself.
By slow stages the men found their way back to the sea, and through the
charity of their own more fortunate countrymen, they were now homeward
bound. A more forlorn looking set of men I have never seen; emaciated,
ragged, unclean and discouraged. They had paid the price.
A man groped his way towards me, his face disfigured and his eyelids
closed forever. He had money, nearly a thousand dollars, he told me.
"But what would I not give for only one eye?" he said pathetically. He
paid the price when a powder blast blotted daylight out forever.
A rather forward Jewish girl snatched from my hands goodies intended for
the children, and at a glance I knew the price she had paid, if she
carried any dollars across the sea. She belonged to an ever-increasing
number of Jewish women, who have forsaken the path of virtue or have
been pushed from it, who knows into how deep a hell?
A man came to me, the mere shadow of a man and asked for some soothing
sweet for his cough. He was a Montenegrin and had been a stalwart
soldier in the army of his prince, in whose domain the white plague is
practically unknown. He, too, carried money home; more money than any
man in his village in the Black Mountains had ever possessed. It was
earned in the iron works of an Ohio town, in a pit so full of flying
metal, ground from rough surfaces, that every breath carried destruction
to his lungs.
The sight of this man recalled the conversation at the breakfast table,
and I looked for the hospital. Two stories below the steerage deck I
found the contagious ward, and upon iron cots lay the three dying men,
mere shadows of men except the eyes. They were still the eyes of flesh,
grown larger seemingly, through suffering, which was all too real.
Nearest the door, and nearest death apparently, was the Greek. He looked
almost happy; for he had cheese, the cheese of Greece, which my opposite
neighbour at table was feeding him bit by bit. He ate and ate, and
called for more. Poor fellow! His soul had already forgotten the glory
of Athens; but his craving stomach had a long memory; it remembered the
cheese of Greece.
Stolidly looking at the iron ceiling from which hung the huge sweat
drops of the labouring ship, lay a dying Slav. The racial marks of his
face were almost obliterated, and one could with difficulty recognize
the Slav, except by his silence in suffering. My hands touched his; and
although they were mere skin and bone, the marks of heavy labour were
still upon them. His memory had not quite faded; for between panting
breaths he told me of the village in Hungary from which he had gone, a
lusty youth; of the old Matka he had left behind, of the sea voyage and
then of his work in the mines. It was "Prach, prach" (dust, dust), he
said. He was sure that when the air of the Tatra mountains filled his
lungs again, he would get well. Did he want anything? "Yes, palenka."
His native white, biting drink. Oh, if he just had palenka! "Wouldn't
whiskey do as well?" "Yes, anything that gives strength; but palenka
would be the best."
There was a third man, an Italian of the Calabrian group to which Tony
and John Sullivan belonged. There was, or there had been, a third man;
for even as we turned towards him, a rattle in his hollow chest gave
sign that he had crossed to another harbour than that for which he had
embarked. We would have lingered; but death brought the nurse and the
doctor, with much muttering and many complaints against us, and threats
of quarantine.
After all, it was good to reach the noisy deck, even the deck of the
steerage--and life.
"Tombola! Tombola!" the Calabrian peasants shouted, shaking a pasteboard
box of dice. "Tre, sette, dieci,--terno!" the lucky winner screamed,
gathering up the greasy soldi piled on the greasy deck.
In another corner the dealer was shaking a wicker basket full of the
lucky and unlucky numbers, drawing them forth one by one and calling
them out to the winners and the losers. All over the deck there were
such groups of noisy Italians, ignorant of the death of a comrade who
had drawn the unlucky number--or the lucky one; who can tell?
Unconscious of the fact that death had come in the wake of the ship and
overtaken us, all went merrily on--and no one in cabin or steerage must
be told; for the dark angel is nowhere so unwelcome as upon the
uncertain deep, where there are never more than a few planks of wood or
girders of steel between time and eternity. No one thought of death that
morning. Who could think of it with the sky so blue and the sea so calm?
Even nature seemed oblivious of the fact that one of her children had
paid the price.
Nor was the man from Boston, nor many men in Boston, with all their
inherited sensitiveness of conscience, nor the men in Pennsylvania where
conscience is blackened by coal, and hardened by steel--none of these
men, I say, was conscious or is conscious how great is the price these
European peasants pay for the dollars they carry home.
In all the industrial states, there are hundreds and thousands of
graves, marked by humble wooden crosses, beneath which sleep just such
toilers, snatched from life by "The broken wheel, the loosened cord."
They have paid the price, the greatest price, giving their lives for the
dollars, the hoarding of which we begrudged them.
No less than 10,000 of these despised aliens laid down their lives in
one year, digging coal, making steel, blasting stone and doing the
numberless dangerous drudgeries of our industrial life.
All that the Boston man saw was the money, the good clothes, the
celluloid collars of the men, and the gaudy shams that decked the women.
_I_ could see the mouths of half a dozen mines, out of which were
dragged in one year the mangled, powder-burnt, asphyxiated bodies of a
thousand once-breathing souls. I heard the cries and groans of hundreds
of women and thousands of children; for I have seen mothers embrace
bodiless limbs and limbless bodies, fragments of the sons they had
borne, and although 30,000,000 dollars and more were carried home by the
living, they too had paid a price beyond the hard labour they did. In
the suffering they endured in damp mines, by the hot metal blasts, in
cold ditches and in dark and dangerous tunnels, they paid the price,
indeed.
I wish that the man from Boston and all the men with small vision had
been on the deck of that Italian steamer, when three times during her
long voyage the engines stopped their breathing, just before sunrise. In
the steerage and in the cabin alike, men and women were asleep. The
captain, the doctor and a few of us, who knew and dared, were the only
ones astir.
From the depths of the ship the sailors carried the sail-cloth sheathed
bundles and held them over the waters. Then sharp and clear the captain
called: "Let go!" The engines breathed again, the mighty screws churned
the quiet sea to foam and the surging waves enfolded the bodies of the
men who had paid the price.
III
A MURDERER, MARY AND AN HONORARY DEGREE
Once a day the steerage was roused from its monotony. Men, women and
children, a thousand of them, pushed and crowded (good-naturedly, of
course) in the attempt to get a glimpse of a fellow passenger. There was
nothing which distinguished him from the rest of the immigrants except
that he had taken human life, and was being carried back to pay the
penalty of his crime.
The hour which he daily spent on deck was an hour of singular triumph.
Almost reverently the crowd stared at him, as if he had just dropped
from heaven or risen from his grave. I am sure that no one felt any ill
will towards him, and even the sailor who, revolver in hand, stood guard
over him, shared the distinction which the steerage felt in having a
murderer there. The fact is, he did not look like a murderer or even
like the typical bad man; neither did he seem smitten by remorse, nor
did he exhibit any kind of bravado which might have aroused resentment.
Graciously he accepted the cigar which some one gave him, and as
graciously permitted me to light it for him (his hands were in irons)
while with remarkable frankness he told me his history and the story of
his crime.
Of course he was an Italian, born in a southern town in which some
20,000 people had accepted poverty as their inheritance, and made little
or no struggle against it. They had also accepted the burden of taxation
and exploitation by government officials; although here and there some
one with the gleam of freedom in his breast felt the grievousness of it,
and secretly or openly protested.
Patriot brigands enough there were, and the stories of their exploits
fired the imagination of a number of boys, of whom Luigi (the murderer)
was one. On Sunday evenings under a clump of cedars these boys gathered,
until in imitation of their elders they organized a society, whose
patriotic purposes involved nothing less than the overthrow of monarchy,
and wiping Church, priests and Pope from the face of the earth. A rather
ambitious program for minors; but they had imbibed the "Zeit-geist" in
an exaggerated form, had begun to feel the great social wrongs of the
times, and like most youths, admired the heroic.
Luigi told me frankly that he committed thefts first from the till of
his father, a shopkeeper, who, upon the discovery of his son's
pilfering, beat him half to death and drove him out of the house. After
that the boy stole from any one and any place; because the "Society for
the Liberation of the People of Italy" needed money, first, last and all
the time, to carry on its ambitious schemes. Ultimately he was caught
and sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
I know something of the horrors of Southern Italian prisons, and I could
well believe that three such years would ripen rebellious thoughts into
desperate ones. Luigi left the prison with vengeance in his heart, slew
the judge who had sentenced him, and fled to America.
I have purposely robbed his story of all its patriotic and picturesque
elements, for I do not wish to glorify Luigi. He is just a type, perhaps
not a very fair type, of many of his countrymen whose coming to America
disturbs us and whose leaving it causes no regrets.
Luigi's further history was interesting to me because he knew some
things about America which I did not know. He had lived a number of
years in the state of New Jersey, which seems to be a sort of haven of
refuge for Trusts and Anarchists. During those years he had been in
intimate relation with our courts, jails, prisons and police. He had
plotted for them, with them and against them, and now was being sent
back in irons because (he said) his remaining in the United States would
embarrass certain officials. Luigi saw no great difference between
prisons here and in Italy; between jailers there and jailers here;
between judges on this side the water and on the other side. The only
difference that Luigi _did_ see was that over here they are much smarter
than in Italy.
There was but one good thing which Luigi experienced in America. They
had been good to his "kid." Over and over again he told me that, and
over and over again he blessed the good women of a certain New Jersey
town for being good to his "kid." Often as he cursed the police (police,
state and nation are one in the mind of Luigi and his kind) so often did
he bless two women at the edge of that New Jersey town, who had truly
revealed the heart of a nation, whose conscience had been falsely
revealed to him by the police and the petty courts.
Looking over the railing, the cabin passengers watched the murderer as
eagerly as those in the steerage, and when I returned after my interview
with him, every one clamoured for a report of the conversation. Many of
the men sneered at my suggestion that the murderer might be a victim of
circumstances.
"He ought to be shot!" was the brief but conclusive argument of several.
"We're not strict enough with them," said the man from Boston; and added
the information that shooting is too good for these Black Hands and
Anarchists. He called me an "unpractical sentimentalist." The man from
the West, however, took my part.
"You may call the professor a sentimentalist, but I guess he may be
right after all. We've got a sentimentalist as they called him, in
Denver. He took it into his head that you can bust kids of their
meanness by being good to them instead of clapping them into jail, and
he has done it. We called him a dangerous sentimentalist; but the kids
of Denver call him their friend, and he has done more for them than all
the sheriffs and judges and jailers put together."
While the man from the West was speaking, "Dirty Mary," as we called
her, looked wistfully up at me and reminded me that it was candy time in
the steerage.
Mary was positively the most hopeless little creature my eyes have ever
seen. She was about eleven years of age, and could swear as
picturesquely in English as if she were a Bowery tough; while from her
stockingless feet up to her head, which looked as if it never had been
guilty of contact with a hair-brush, she was a mass of unpicturesque
dirt.
Mary had come from Naples to Mulberry Street, and never had a chance to
be homesick, for she never had a home. Her father was in prison and her
mother had all she could do to take care of the numerous little ones,
who, at the
[Illustration: DIRTY MARY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION]
earliest moment, like the fledglings in a nest, were pushed out to shift
for themselves. Mary had slept beneath docks, in ash cans and dark
alleys, and although still a child, there was nothing left for her to
learn concerning the evils of this world.
As I was sharing my sweets with her, the Boston man called down from his
safe vantage ground: "Try your love-making on Mary!"
"What's that bloke talkin' about?" she asked, noisily chewing her candy.
"He has challenged me," I answered.
"Say," she said, looking at the generous proportions of the Boston man
and then at me, "he's got a cinch, ain't he?"
Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge.
"Mary," I began, in my gentlest and most persuasive tones, "Mary, I want
you to wash yourself."
"Ain't got no soap," was the reply.
"Will you wash yourself if I furnish the soap?"
"Nop"--very decidedly--"no soap in mine."
The preliminary skirmish was over, and I had lost; but I was not
discouraged. Probably the attack had been wrong. I left Mary, and going
to the barber's shop, I bought the most strongly scented soap he had.
Armed with this weapon I returned to the steerage, and renewed the
attack.
"Mary," I said, holding the soap close to her nose, "this will make you
smell sweet all over, if you use water with it."
Mary sniffed the musk-laden air, and the primitive spirit in her, lured
by the odour, conquered her will. She took the cake of soap and it
disappeared in the pocket of her greasy skirt. Triumphantly I went to
the upper deck and reported progress. After a remarkably short time Mary
reappeared and smilingly looked at me from below. She had used the soap,
all of it, I think; for it was liberally plastered over her face, her
hands and even her limbs. Indeed dirt and soap were pretty equally
distributed over her body.
I had never known that Mary was shy; but when she heard the laughter of
the passengers, she disappeared as quickly as a frightened deer, leaving
a strong smell of musk behind her.
"What was you all laughing about?" she demanded, when, after a long
search, I found her tucked in among the blankets of the shelf which was
her bed. Then I explained to her the uses of soap, and by the aid of a
pocket mirror showed her its effect when used with the proper proportion
of water. Mary was an apt pupil, and then and there washed herself for
the first time in many days and weeks.
"Mary, will you wear stockings if I bring them to you?"
Emphatically and briefly Mary answered: "Sure."
"And shoe-strings in your shoes?" I was growing bold; but "According to
your faith----"
The next day Mary appeared, washed clean and wearing stockings which my
own little woman had provided.
After that the shoes were laced, and before we reached Naples a
hair-brush had invaded the wilderness which crowned her head. A bright
ribbon bow was the bribe which accomplished that miracle. Her teeth even
became acquainted with a tooth-brush, although I had to use chewing-gum
as an inducement to open her tightly closed lips.
Outwardly, at least, Mary became a changed creature. I cannot tell much
about what went on in her little soul; but I trust she felt something of
that love, which, even in the imperfect way in which it was manifested
to her, had some power.
The love I have for the people in the steerage has begotten love in
them, and I have brothers and sisters innumerable; while countless
children call me "Uncle." I am quite sure that if these strangers are to
be blended into our common life, the one great power which must be used
will be this something, which practical people call sentimentalism; but
which after all, at its best, is a really practical thing, and
accomplishes what rigid law, whether good or bad, cannot accomplish. I
have seen this force at work, healing, reclaiming, redeeming; and my
faith in it is unbounded, although the practical man may ridicule it and
the scientific man may scoff at it. My faith in love as a factor, the
greatest factor in our social life, is based first of all upon my belief
in our common kinship.
I recognize no barriers of race, class or religion between myself and
any other human being that needs me. I happen to know something about
human beings; I know intimately many races and more nationalities, and I
have discovered that when one breaks through the strange speech, which
so often separates; when one closes one's eyes to what climate has
burned upon a man's skin, or what social or economic conditions have
formed or deformed--one will find in every human being a kinsman.
Those of us who know certain races most intimately have come to the
conclusion that what at first we regarded as essential differences, are
largely upon the surface; and that when we have penetrated the unusual,
we quickly reach the essentially alike.
The most interesting books and the most acceptable lectures about
strange peoples often come from those who know their subjects least.
They were not long enough among them to discover the likeness--that
which is so commonplace that one cannot write books about it or deliver
sensational lectures regarding it.
If emigration to America has done nothing else, it has proved that but
few race characteristics, if any, are fixed. Should some sceptic wish to
be convinced on this point, let him visit such towns as South Bend,
Indiana; Scranton, Pa., or Youngstown, Ohio, and look at a group of
Slavs or Italians who came here twenty years ago. Let him go among those
who have had the full advantage of our environment, of our standard of
living, of education and of an enlightening religion. He will find what
we call race characteristics almost obliterated, from the faces of even
the first generation.
The sluggish Pole has become vivacious; while the fiery Italian has had
his blood cooled to a temperature approved by even the most fastidious
of those who believe that fervour and enthusiasm are not signs of good
breeding.
My own anthropological acumen has sometimes played me sore tricks,
especially in the following case: I was the guest of a Woman's Club, in
the Middle West, to speak on the theme of Immigration. At the close of
the session, refreshments were served.
The mistress of the house--and be it known that her ancestors came to
this country when there was neither steerage nor cabin--told me that
she had an Hungarian maid whom she wished me to see. I looked about the
room and saw two young women serving the guests. One was a typical
American girl, with almost a Gibson face; the daughter of the house, I
decided. The face of the other showed some Slavic characteristics, and
mentally I placed her birthplace in the Carpathian Mountains. I was
congratulating myself on my good judgment, when the young ladies came to
serve me; then I discovered that the one with Slavic features was the
daughter of the house, while the "Gibson girl" had been born by the
river March, in Hungary.
One of the most wonderful sights from the sociological standpoint is the
main street of Scranton, Pa., and the neighbouring Court-house Square.
Scranton has a weekly corso. A vast stream of young people passes up and
down the street on Saturday afternoon, to see and to be seen; to court
and to be courted. I have watched that stream for hours, and although
fully eighty per cent. of those young people are of foreign birth or
children of the foreign born, I could only faintly trace racial
differences. Almost invariably, too, the racial marks have been most
effectually blotted out from the faces of those who have had the best
advantages; that is, the same advantages which we have had. It is
noticeable that children of the Southern Italians grow larger than
their parents, and would grow better than they, if in the changed
environment love would supply what chance or fate has denied them.
I believe in love as a factor in social redemption, not only because I
believe that we are essentially alike, but because I believe that most
human beings respond to it more or less quickly. We know that children
do, and that we ourselves rarely outgrow the response to love.
I recall once travelling westward on an immigrant train. To begin with,
the car was very much crowded, and after it became part of a slow local
train, it was invaded by native Americans, who fretted much and justly,
at having to travel in an unventilated, ill-smelling car.
At one station a mother came in, with a child about five years of age.
The little one was crying bitterly, because it had the toothache. Two
other children caught the infection and lifted up their voices, loud
enough and long enough to set every passenger on edge. The mother of the
five year old tried to comfort her by telling her that soon they would
be at the dentist's, and he would pull the naughty tooth. That remark
failed to produce the desired effect, for the little girl fairly
screamed and the two babies joined in the chorus. Then the mother,
growing angry, cried: "Jenny, if you don't keep still, I'll break your
neck!" At which Jenny, not unnaturally, ran from her. I stretched out
my arms, and catching her held the struggling form for a minute, then
lifted her gently to my knee.
"Tell me, Jenny," I said, "where does the tooth hurt?"
She pointed to her swollen cheek, and I said: "Now, dear, I'll take that
toothache away," and I lightly stroked the sore cheek.
Here let me say that I am neither a Christian Scientist nor a Faith
Healer, and that when I have a toothache, I go straightway to the
dentist. I stroked Jenny's swollen cheek for a time and then asked:
"Does it still hurt, dearie?" and Jenny answered: "Not now. Do it some
more." And I did.
"One, two, three!" I said at last. "I'll put your toothache into my
pocket." And lo! and behold! the toothache was gone.
Relieved of pain, the child soon fell asleep in my arms, and I carried
her back to her mother.
The other children were still crying--challenging my faith in love as a
soothing syrup; and I accepted the challenge.
One baby belonged to a Lithuanian woman who was going to join her
husband in the coal fields of Illinois. It required more than love to
touch that baby; it needed a good digestion as well; for the child was
so dirty that it seemed perilous to take it, from whatever point I
approached. Finally, I landed it safe. Its skin was hot and dry;
evidently it had a fever, and I knew that it would appreciate water
without and within. I applied it liberally, and before long I could
really love the child; for when the dirt was removed, it was fair to
look upon. When its cries ceased, as they did soon after I gave it a
cool drink, I laid it on a seat far from its mother, and it went to
sleep.
All this time the third baby continued its lamentations; they were the
cries of a very young baby, and went to my heart. I asked its Italian
mother to let me take it, and she, having witnessed the miracles I
wrought, had faith in me and gave me her child. As soon as it felt the
strange, muscular arm, however, it howled with renewed vigour; but I
held bravely to it, and walked up and down the car, and down and up, and
up and down again. I had to; for whenever I attempted to sit down, the
baby shrieked the louder, and as I was being eagerly watched by all the
passengers, my reputation was at stake. At last I recalled a little
Italian lullaby, one my Dalmatian nurse used to sing to me; I hummed it
as I continued my weary march, until the child's cries changed to a low
crooning. Then I sat down and number three fell asleep. Triumphantly I
carried it to its mother, and took my seat, much the worse for wear and
perspiring at every pore.
In a short time a benevolent looking lady wearing eye-glasses came to
me and said: "I beg your pardon, sir, but are you an M. D.?"
"No, madam," I replied, "I am an L. L. B."
"What is that?" she inquired.
"Lover of Little Babies," I answered.
I told this story to my fellow passengers in the cabin; not only because
I am proud of my honorary degree, but to prove my belief in the fact
that most human beings respond to love, and also that it is a specific
for many ills.
My theory may be unscientific and impractical; but my fellow voyagers
saw it successfully carried out in the steerage of that steamer.
Shall I ever forget the landing of the ship at Naples? Tony and John
Sullivan and Pietro and Guisseppi, resplendent in their American
clothes,--eager to land; yet not forgetting to shake my hand as they
bade me a smiling good-bye. I doubt that there was one of those hundreds
of men whose life's history I did not know, whose hopes for the future I
did not share and in whom my love had not awakened some kindly feeling.
I knew the women and the children; I was expected to kiss the
babies--and I did--and the children all said good-bye to their "Uncle."
After all, I may not have done them any good, but I know that they
enriched my life. Proudly I looked at Mary, no longer "Dirty Mary," and
her clean face made me happy; while her smile was worth much more than
gold. I had new brothers and sisters, nephews, nieces and children.
My orthodox friend from Boston stood beside me when they landed. "This
is like heaven," he said as he looked around.
The matchless bay, with its blue water, glittered in the light of the
sun, which made a pavement of gold fit for angels and spirits to walk
upon. It was like heaven to me also; not because I thought of golden
pavements or harps or halos, or any of the glories which the imagination
might picture to itself. To me it seemed like heaven because "The
redeemed walk there," those whom America is lifting from the steerage
into the many cabins of the Lord.
IV
REFLEX INFLUENCES
The ports of Naples, Triest and Fiume felt the full tide of returning
immigration, and although it came sweeping in with unprecedented force,
it was not regarded as a calamity. For hours at each port, noisy venders
of fruit, and "runners" for modest lodging places hung about the ship,
and every passenger who disembarked was an asset, not only to the port
in which he waited for the train or boat which would carry him to his
native place, but to the whole economic life of his nation.
There was something almost grotesquely grandiose in the air with which
each immigrant viewed the shores of his native land, and an unconscious
exaggeration of our American ways in his walk and talk, and the
prodigality with which he handled small change.
The street venders and purveyors of small pleasures recognized this, and
appealed to his newly awakened generosity by charging him twice as much
for everything as they charged when he was outward bound.
The customs officers had a sharpened vision
[Illustration: TRIEST
Austria's commercial harbor; prosperous, whether the immigrant tide ebbs
or flows.]
and did not treat his baggage with the usual disrespect. The brass-bound
trunks contained phonographs to disturb the age-long silence of some
mountain village, samples of American whiskey, "the kind that burns all
the way down," and therefore characteristic of our temper. There were
cigars, manufactured by the American Tobacco Trust, and safely
concealed; for the Austrian and Italian governments have been wise
enough to create a monopoly of their own on tobacco.
Gold trinkets, too, there were, for some Dulcinea in the Apennines or
the Carpathians--trinkets brought as tokens of faithfulness, which is
often as spurious as the metal; and ah, yes! there is something else
which they bring and no customs boundary can keep it out. It is hidden
away in the innermost being and will come to light some day, although
now the wanderer himself may be unconscious of it.
The returned immigrants scatter into thousands of villages, rousing them
from their commonplaceness by stories of adventure, boasts of mighty
deeds of valor and praise or criticism of our strange customs.
Sitting in the inn of a little Alpine village, I once overheard one of
these immigrants comparing the slow ways of the natives with our swifter
pace.
"In America the trains go so fast that they can't stop to take on
passengers; they just have hooks with which they are caught as the train
flies past.
"They have reaping machines," this candidate for the "Ananias Club"
continued, "to which a dozen horses are hitched, and the grain is cut,
threshed, ground to flour and baked, in a few minutes. All you have to
do is to touch a button and you can get bread or cake as you choose."
All this his auditors believed; but when he told them that we build
houses forty stories high, their credulity was strained to the breaking
point; although he swore by the memory of his departed mother that it
was so, and that he had seen it with his own eyes.
One reason that the returned immigrant is so quickly recognized is, that
he purposely emphasizes the difference between himself and those who
have remained at home. He does everything and wears everything which
will make him like an American, even if over here he had scarcely moved
out of his group or come in touch with our civilization. With pride the
men wear our clothing, including stiff collars and ties, and when one is
in doubt as to a man's relation to our life, a glance at his feet is
sufficient; "for by their"--shoes--"ye shall know them."
While one may deplore the loss of the picturesque in European peasant
life, there is an ethical significance in the immigrant's American
garments which is of rather vital importance.
The Polish peasant in his native environment is one of the laziest among
European labourers. Wrapped in his sheepskin coat, summer and winter,
walking barefoot the greater part of the year, and in winter putting his
feet into clumsy, heavy boots which impeded his progress, these garments
fitted his temper. They were heavy, inexpensive, never changing, and
rarely needed renewal. The American clothes he wears are a symbol of his
altered character. They mean a new standard of living even as they mean
a new standard of effort.
In America the Polish labourer loses his native laziness. The journey in
itself has shaken him out of his lethargy; the high gearing of our
industrial wheels, the pressure brought to bear upon him by the American
foreman, the general atmosphere of our life charged by an invigorating
ozone, and the absence of a leisure class, at least from the industrial
community, have, in a few years, changed what many observers regarded as
a fixed characteristic.
The whole Slavic race is inclined to lead an easy life, and immigration
is destined to have a permanent effect upon it; for the returned
immigrant acts contagiously upon his community. Unbiased landowners and
manufacturers have told me that we have trained their workmen in
industry, that we have quickened their wits and that while wages have
risen nearly 60% in almost all departments of labour, the efficiency of
the labourers has been correspondingly increased, most noticeably where
the largest number of returned immigrants has entered the home field.
The Slavic peasants both in Hungary and Poland were gradually losing
their allotted land, and were socially and physically deteriorating,
prior to the movement to America. Indolence coupled with intemperance
drove them into the hands of usurers, and they dropped into the landless
class, thus becoming dependent upon casual labour.
The returned immigrant began to buy land which the large landowners were
often forced to sell, because wages had risen abnormally and labourers
were often not to be had at any price. In the four years between 1899
and 1903, land owned by peasants increased in some districts to 418%,
and taking the immigrant districts in Austro-Hungary and Russian-Poland
together, the increase in four years reaches the incredible figure of
173%.
In three districts of Russian-Poland the peasants bought in those four
years 14,694 acres of farmland. This of course means not only that money
was brought back from America, but that the peasant at home has become
more industrious, if not always more temperate and frugal.
The little village of Kochanovce in the district of Trenczin in Hungary,
out of which but few had emigrated to America, and to which not many
families had returned, has, under this new economic impulse, bought the
land on which the villagers' forefathers were serfs and on which they
had worked during the harvest for about twenty cents a day. The peasants
bought the whole baronial estate, including the castle, giving a
mortgage for the largest part of the purchase sum; but they are now the
owners of one of the finest estates in Hungary, and the mortgage drives
them to work as they have never worked before. This same impulse has
struck the district of Nyitra in which the land had almost gone out of
the peasants' hands, lost by the same causes, intemperance and
indolence.
In the last five years the change has been so great as to seem
marvellous. Usurers have been driven out of business and the peasant's
house has ceased to be a mud hut with a straw-thatched roof. In fact,
that type of building has been condemned by law, at the initiative of
returned immigrants.
The shopkeepers throughout the whole immigrant territory rejoice. Their
stock is increased by many varieties of goods; for the peasant now wants
the best there is in the market, often useless luxuries, to be sure;
but while he may spend his money "for that which is not meat," he wants
to spend, and that means effort, than which the Slavs as a race need
nothing more for their social and political salvation.
Their advance is strikingly illustrated by the following examples.
The B. Brothers of Vienna are manufacturers of neckties. On a recent
visit to their establishment I met some buyers from Hungary, one of
whom, when the salesman showed him the class of goods which he had been
in the habit of buying, highly coloured, stiff bows of cheap cotton,
said:
"We have no use for such stuff. This is the tie we want," and he pulled
out an American tie of rather fine quality and the latest pattern.
I had to promise the head of the firm of B. Brothers to put him in touch
with an American haberdasher's journal, so that he may keep himself
informed as to our styles.
Partly to test the influence of immigration in the remotest region of
Hungary and partly to satisfy my craving for a certain kind of candy, I
visited a little village hidden away in the Carpathians, where neither
steam nor electricity has yet obtruded itself. There in a certain store,
I bought my very first sweets, and although I have since tasted the
delicacies of many civilizations, the lingering flavour of that first
candy still seems the most delicious, and its taste has never left my
palate. It was hard, highly coloured and usually exposed to flies and
dust; but it was my first love, and my first pennies were sacrificed to
it; so I was eager to revel in its delights again.
I went to that village in the spirit of one who goes on a pilgrimage,
and as one seeks one's favourite shrine so did I seek that little store.
My palate's memory led me to the very door; but in front of it, forcing
itself upon my candy-hungry gaze, was a penny in the slot machine, out
of which, in response to two Hungarian Filers, came dropping a stick of
genuine American chewing-gum. It is needless to say that my primitive,
highly-coloured candy was no more. In its place were caramels and
buttercups very much like those I had left behind me in the United
States.
Now I do not mean to imply that chewing-gum and caramels have any social
or ethical bearing upon my subject; but they do prove that the old order
changes and that the new has been brought in by the immigrant. Still
within the sphere of the economic, yet having large ethical value, is
the fact that the returned immigrant brings gold, not only in his pocket
but in his teeth. I certainly never realized the far-reaching social and
ethical value of the dentist until I saw the contrast between the
returned immigrant, especially the contrast between his wife and
daughter and the women who had remained at home.
If it ever was true that coarse fare makes strong teeth, it certainly
has not been true during the period of my observations among the peasant
people of Europe.
Where I know the bread to be coarsest and the fare simplest, as for
instance in impoverished Montenegro, there the old, toothless hags are
most numerous, and even the mouths of the young are disfigured by
decaying teeth. This is especially true of the Alpine and Carpathian
regions, out of which many of the Slavic immigrants come; there, a woman
of forty is usually an old woman because she has no teeth. She is ugly
in consequence, and therefore neglected by her husband.
The immigrant woman has discovered that gold in the teeth renews one's
youth, that it preserves one's charms and is apt to keep lovers and
husbands more loyal. Mistresses in America know how readily these
foreign servants sacrifice their wages upon the dentist's altar.
Not only does dentistry keep the women young and their lovers faithful,
it keeps the men in good health, adds to their self-respect, and into
regions hitherto untouched by their beneficent influence, it has
introduced tooth-brushes and dentifrice.
If the returned immigrant can be easily recognized
[Illustration: Before he emigrated
When the Immigrant comes home.
A CONTRAST IN HOMES]
by his shoes and by gold in his teeth, his residence can be quickly
detected from the fact that day and night his isba is blessed by fresh
air; and perhaps more significant to the world's well-being than the
American economic doctrine of the "Open Door," is its physiological
doctrine of the open window.
Pastor Holubek, of Bosacz in Hungary, when I asked him what effect the
returned immigrant had upon his parish, said:
"A good effect. The returned immigrant is a new man. He carries himself
differently, he commands the respect of his fellows, he treats his wife
better and he keeps the windows of his isba open."
The last two facts are exceedingly important, and my observations bear
out his testimony. Wherever I saw an open window in the evening, I could
with perfect assurance open the door and say: "How do you do?" and I was
certain to be greeted by a still more emphatic and cordial, "How do you
do?"
For some inexplicable reason, Europeans of all classes are averse to air
in sleeping rooms, especially at night. Night air is supposed to hold
all sorts of evils, and even the medical profession, progressive as it
is, has not yet freed itself from this terrible superstition.
Frequently I have discovered in the returned immigrant a quickening of
the moral sense, especially among the men who had come in contact with
the better class of American mechanics; and the discovery was as welcome
as unexpected. I saw this emphasized during my trip last year. It was on
a Sunday's journey among the villages of the valley of the Waag.
Picturesque groups were moving along the highway to and from the church
and into the village and out of it. The appearance of my companions and
myself always created a great sensation and never a greater one than on
Sunday when the peasants were at leisure. They took it as a special
privilege to see "genuine Americans," and those who had been over here
were quickly on the scene to air their English and to show their
familiarity with our kind.
It was a reciprocal pleasure; for it seemed like a breath from home to
hear men talk intelligently of Hazleton, Pittsburg, Scranton and
Wilkes-Barre; moreover it gave us a splendid opportunity to test the
effect of our civilization upon them.
In one village a husband with his wife and two children came out of
their isba, and we could easily imagine ourselves at home; for the whole
family looked as if it had just come from a grand bargain sale at one of
our department stores. What seemed most delightful to us was the way in
which the man spoke of his wife, and no American husband could have been
more careful of her than was he; all this in striking contrast to the
peasants to whom the woman is still an inferior being.
In conversation with them, I took the returned immigrant as my subject
and told them something of our own social order as shown in the relation
of husband and wife in America; upon which one of the peasants told a
very ugly and realistic story to illustrate what he thought of women.
Then it was that the unexpected happened. My immigrant friend
blushed--yes, blushed--just as I should expect any well-bred man to
blush under similar circumstances, and said to me: "Don't mind him. He
has a dirty mouth. He may after all have a clean heart."
The man who blushed had been five years in--Pittsburg!
The change brought about through immigration, even in a youth of the
better class, whose character had been spoiled by his early training,
was shown in a young Magyar in Budapest. That city has the unenviable
reputation of being one of the most immoral cities in Europe. The
immorality of the great cities is everywhere very much alike in certain
respects; still it seems to me that a city is more or less immoral, not
according to the size of its tenderloin district, but in how far
immorality has been accepted as the norm of life. In that respect
Budapest is considerably in the lead; for its youth is nourished in an
atmosphere of indolence, false pride and various phases of social
impurity.
The family to which this particular young man belonged boasted three
sons of whom he is the oldest. He went the road which leads to
destruction, and he went with the full knowledge of his parents, for
both were going their own gait in the same direction.
Finally he was forced to run away because he had transgressed the law.
He landed in New York penniless and fortunately without friends. He
learned all the lessons which homesickness, hunger and cold could teach
him, and as there was no other way to escape them than by labour, this
youth, who never had worked, began driving a milk wagon and ultimately
graduated into a clerkship. When I saw him among his own people in
Budapest where he was visiting, he was so changed in his physique that
not even his closest friends recognized him. Although the law had been
appeased and by the death of his father he had the opportunity to
conduct the business bequeathed him, his awakened conscience rebelled
against the conditions around him and he was eager to return to America.
It was interesting to note that his friends found him unbearable,
declaring him no longer a gentleman because he worked with his hands and
was not ashamed of it; while the young ladies decided that he had been
spoiled by his sojourn in America because he was not eternally kissing
their hands and had forgotten how to make pretty and meaningless
compliments.
Of course one does not always receive favourable replies to one's
questions as to the effect of the returned immigrant upon his community.
Manufacturers who exploited his labour, large landowners to whom he was
no more than a serf, and priests, uneasy about the effect of the
contagion, are usually very critical; but these unfavourable replies are
only a proof that the leaven is at work.
I put the question to some guests at a confirmation feast. The priest
told me that the immigrants become Atheists and Salvationists. In his
mind there was not much difference between them. The judge told me that
they become immoral; which meant that they do not pay him sufficient
revenue. The host, a wealthy landowner, said that they become Socialists
and Anarchists; which meant that they demand higher wages and better
treatment. All agreed that emigration has been of large economic value.
So far as my observation goes, I feel certain that emigration has been
of inestimable economic and ethical value to the three great monarchies
chiefly concerned, namely: Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia. It has
withdrawn inefficient labour and has returned some of it capable of more
and better work; it has lifted the status of the peasantry to a degree
which could not have been achieved even by a revolution; it has educated
the neglected masses, lifted them to a higher standard of living and has
implanted new and vital ideals.
That there are attendant evils, no one will question. There is much more
discontent than there ever has been, more haste and less leisure; there
is less respect for authority and for established institutions; certain
social evils have been accentuated; the newly acquired wealth has proved
disastrous to some, and family ties have been strained by the absence of
the heads of many households.
Nevertheless, an Hungarian statesman, who had risen from the ranks, said
to me: "America has been a blessing to us. Had Columbus not discovered
it, all Europe would still be in servitude, and had it not been
rediscovered by our peasants, they would not have had much chance to get
their necks from under the yoke.
"America is our leaven and will yet be our salvation."
I have watched the leaven at work, and in the succeeding chapters I have
recorded some concrete instances, which clearly show that "A little
leaven, leaveneth the whole lump."
V
OUR CRITICS
The third-class waiting-room in the Oderberg station, on the Northern
Railroad of Austria, is splendid vantage ground from which to watch the
racial and national conglomerate that forms the insecure structure
called the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Here from her East and West, her North and South, one meets those great
social currents which stream from the mountains to the plains and from
the villages to the cities. Here, also, the tides of immigration come in
and go out, and by their volume one can judge the prosperity of the
United States, or at least the condition of our labour markets.
Here the "spick and span" German, from across the border, meets his less
vigorous and more "gemuethlich" cousin, the Austrian.
Here the Moravian and the Czech touch elbows and glory in their Slavic
speech--the age-long battle for the supremacy of their language being
one of the few points which they have won in this contentious monarchy.
This is also the meeting place of Southern and Western Slavs, and here
the fierce looking Bosnians carry, in their erstwhile weapon belts,
pins, pipes, jack-knives and razors, which they sell to their Slavic
brothers of the West; they even deign to speak in broken German to the
hated "Schwabs," when driving their bargains.
Glancing around the crowded waiting-room, one sees Ruthenians and
Wallachians, in picturesque garb, travelling from their impoverished
mountain homes to the upper Danubian plain. They are harvesters, and
their backs are bent under the weight of crude cooking utensils and
primitive harvest implements.
Close to this group are fiercely moustachioed Magyars, in their
semi-Oriental, loose, white linen trousers and heavy sheepskin coats.
They are going to take charge of the flocks of sheep on some lordly
estates; they know the ways of all four-footed animals, and are
considered faithful shepherds.
In one corner stand smoothly shaven, coarse featured Slovaks, in
clothing, home-made, from their felt boots to their felt hats; primitive
folk they are, seeking labour in the industrial cities along this busy
highway.
Of course, there are Jews from the East and the West; as far removed
from each other in culture and beliefs as those two points of the
compass, yet all swayed by the same mysterious force which at its best
turns their vision towards Jehovah, and at its worst towards Mammon.
They all are divided more or less by speech, blood and faith and are
united, only by the poverty which compels them to travel third-class on
the government's railways, whose low-zone tariff encourages the
migrations of its people; thus easily relieving economic distress in
some regions and providing labour where it is needed.
When the train comes, the conductor sorts this mixture of humanity
according to his prejudices or the seeming ability of the travellers to
reward him for rescuing them from this malodorous conglomerate, by
providing a less crowded compartment. As a rule, I am willing to be thus
rescued, but not this time; for there is one element in evidence which
makes the well-known mass of people more interesting than usual; namely,
the returning immigrant. "Where thou goest, I will go," even if it was
into the thick of bag and baggage carried on the backs of men and women,
through the narrow door, into an already over-crowded compartment where
windows were hermetically sealed and where the air was not only
stiflingly hot but full of mysterious odours, much unlike those of
"Araby the blest."
There seemed no limit to the capacity of the car or to the patience of
the passengers who were being pushed about like cattle; until the
conductor attempted to thrust in a woman of unusual size, who evidently
was acquainted with our ways and certain words of our language. She let
loose upon the official the vials of her wrath, her realistic Slavic
becoming fairly lurid, reënforced as it was by English words, which,
when used in America, make even printers gasp, when they must be
printed. Were it not that such words can be indicated only by dashes, it
would prove interesting to record them here, to show what changes they
undergo upon the lips of our apt pupils.
Puffing and panting, this colossal woman forced her way through the
crowded car, looking for a seat. I gave her my place, and as she
accepted it, she asked laconically, "'Merican man?" When I nodded
assent, the point of contact was made, we shook hands and said: "How do
you do?"
Like an electric current the greeting communicated itself from bench to
bench. A woman across the aisle caught the force of it and waved her
hand over the heads of the crowd as she cried: "How do you do?" She held
up a fretful boy of five, who raised his voice in lamentation; while she
said: "Behave yourself, kid; there's an American boss on the car." But
the boy, thoroughly American, would not be frightened by threats of
boss, police, or any other bugaboo. He pulled at her skirt, clutched her
expansive hat, nearly tearing it from its insecure moorings, then rolled
the window shade up and down, suddenly letting it go with a
spring--after which, all in one breath, he peremptorily demanded candy,
water, bananas, and that his mother make the reluctant "choo-choo cars"
go at once.
This woman's husband is a merchant in Wilmerding, Pa., and she, after
many years in America, was going home to visit her people, bringing this
hopeful youngster with her to disturb the "peace of Jerusalem."
"If he were my boy," growled the unfortunate man who sat on the same
bench with him, "I'd throw him out the window;" and the woman
apologetically said: "He is an American boy, and they are all like this.
You can't tame them. Whipping does no good."
"Well," the man muttered, under his fierce moustachio, "I am glad I am
not living in America."
A young Moravian woman, who, in America, had exchanged her peasant garb
and ruggedness for our more expensive dress and gentler ways,
corroborated the mother's statement. She had worked in American homes
and testified: "Children in America are all terrible. Nothing is sacred
to them; neither the kitchen nor the church. It's because they have so
few children; they spoil them."
"Yes," agreed a young Hungarian Jew; "in America, they have the one
child system, and many women do not have even one child. They are so
sterile. You should see how thin and flat-chested they are."
Then, in his realistic way, he described the physique of our women. He
was a great talker, that young Jew. Having been unsuccessful in New
York, he was returning home a cynic and a severe critic.
"Hm!" he continued; "the women of America are the boss. Just think of
it; you can't get a woman to black your boots. That is the reason so
many men get a divorce."
He knew all about the American woman's luxuries, and talked loudly and
long of silken petticoats, lace waists, and other sartorial mysteries;
for he had worked in a tailor's shop and was acquainted with all woman's
"doings."
"The American men are to blame!" exclaimed a man who was crowded close
to me. He had returned from America some time before, and was travelling
up and down the country, buying butter and eggs. He had caught a vision
of the American man and his business methods in Chicago, where he had
worked in a large packing-house, and in a modest way, he was applying
his knowledge.
"They work like niggers," he continued, "and let their women remain in
idleness, sitting all day long in rocking-chairs, rocking, rocking"--and
he imitated the motion--"and eating candy. Just think of it! They buy
candy by the pound!"
Evidently he was not imitating the example of American men in the
treatment of his wife who was with him, sharing the hardships of the
journeys from village to village. While he was speaking, she drew their
luncheon from her ample pockets: hard rye bread and Salami, a sausage as
hard as the bread.
"No, indeed!" He had not taken her to America. "That's where they spoil
the women."
His aspiration was to ultimately control the butter and egg business in
his region, and future historians may record his name as a "Captain of
Industry," with those of Armour and Swift. He knew a little of every
language spoken in the dual monarchy, and that, together with the fact
that he spoke some English, made him a most interesting travelling
companion. The greater part of the time he preached to the peasants the
gospel of business. "You poor rascals," he said; "you work in the fields
from sunrise to sunset, eat bread-soup, and not much else, three times a
day, and carry loads heavy enough to break your backs; while the Jews,
who do the business, live in fine houses, eat the best spring geese,
which you raise for them, and send their children to college. You ought
to go to America and see business. Even the little boys of rich people
sell newspapers and lemonade in front of their fathers' palaces. Go into
business and the Jews will have to go back to Jerusalem where they came
from."
The peasants all nodded their heads and said: "Tak ye, tak ye," it is
so, it is so; but one could see in their placid, half-stupid faces, that
if they ever have the spirit which ventures, they must first go to
America.
The corpulent woman who had accepted my seat knew something about the
lot of her kind in America, and, having by this time recovered her
breath, she very emphatically gave the butter and egg man her views on
the subject.
"You say that women don't work in America, and that they are spoiled? I
just come from there; I have been there fourteen years, in McKeesport,
Pa. I have kept boarders ever since I went there, and I haven't had time
to sit in a rocking-chair, and my husband never bought me any candy.
It's true, you can't beat us women there as you can over here. Soon
after we went there, my husband beat me when he was drunk. I took it as
patiently as I did here, and he beat me again and I didn't say anything;
although I carried a black eye for a week. Then the young woman who
takes the money at the grocery store asked me how I hurt myself. I said
I didn't hurt myself, my husband did it. Then that young girl, as thin
as a rail and as meek-looking as a swallow, said: 'You tell me the next
time he hits you.'
"It wasn't long before he beat me again, and I told her and the police
came and took him by the neck and put him in the lock-up, and it cost
me twenty-five dollars to get him out. I earned that money myself and it
was no punishment to him. I told the young woman about it, and she said:
'The next time he hits you, you hit back.' I said: 'Is it allowed?' She
laughed, and said: 'If he hits you first and you kill him, nothing will
happen to you.' It wasn't long until he came home drunk and beat me
again and I gave him one with the rolling-pin and he fell, and as he was
lying there I got so angry I gave him another and another, and after
that he knew better than to beat me."
This Slavic Deborah told her story graphically and dramatically, and,
undoubtedly, her husband was not the first immigrant to learn that
marriage on the European plan is one thing, and on the American plan,
quite another matter.
"Yes," said the young Moravian woman. "When I get married, I'll get an
American husband. They don't expect a dowry, and they don't make you
work like a slave."
"In a year he'll get divorced," the young Hungarian Jew broke in. "They
do that quickly."
"And what of it?" she retorted. "I'll be still better off. He'll have to
pay me."
I do not know exactly at what point of the conversation I began to sing
the praises of the American man; his loyalty and his sense of
justice--if there is one thing that I enjoy more than singing the
praise of the American woman it is lauding the American man.
Hardly had I begun to speak, when a young Roumanian, whom I had not
previously noticed, commenced to rail at me, telling me in a mixture of
three languages to keep my mouth shut; for he knew better. From the time
he landed in New York until he left the country, he had not met a man
who did not take advantage of him or ill-treat him. In Chicago, he was
lured from the Union Station to a saloon on Canal Street, and, when he
came to himself, he was lying in an alley, penniless. He found his way
to Montana, where he herded sheep. There he tasted something of
loneliness and homesickness, seeing nothing for weeks but red hills and
blue sky--not a living thing except his sheep, or wolves to drive away.
Then one day came American men on ponies and killed every one of his
sheep, hundreds and hundreds of them, knocked him down and threatened to
riddle him with bullets if he did not turn his face towards the East and
march on without looking back. Days and days he walked, and because his
face was of a darker hue than others, and his clothes looked strange,
"No man gave unto him." He then worked in the mines of Colorado. "The
men there," he said, "shoot, drink, and gamble, and have about as much
regard for human life as for the life of sheep, and as soon as I had
money enough I made ready to go home." No more America for him, and no
praise for its men.
"That's not so, Brother," came a voice from the farther end of the car,
and I turned to see this valiant champion of ours. Had I been asked to
give the place of his nativity, I should have put it in that Middle West
of ours, which takes from her children all surplus flesh and puts in its
place bone and sinew. His complexion was sallow, and the general
expression of his face betokened sensitiveness, bordering on the
abnormal. "I have been in America twenty years, and those years in
Chicago, and I have met many good men. The good men don't shoot and
drink and gamble."
It seemed strange language to my travelling companions; but to me it
sounded familiar.
After the Chicago man had delivered his exordium, I had no difficulty in
getting his story from him, and then I knew "whence this man had this
doctrine." Emigrating in his young manhood to Chicago, he had come in
touch with Methodist missionaries, who befriended him and saved him from
a life of intemperance and infidelity. Unfortunately, his awakened,
religion-hungry soul became confused by the shibboleths of contending
sects; he travelled and travailed all the way, from striving after a
"Second Blessing," to "Soul Sleepers," "Seventh Day Adventists," and
Dowie's religious movement, which at times looked like Opera Bouffe,
but which ended in a great tragedy. I did not discover what form of
faith was now holding the allegiance of his spirit; but as he told me
that it was neither a church nor a sect, I surmised that he belonged to
some church or sect whose chief doctrine is that it is neither.
Evidently the Spirit was upon him, some spirit at least; for he told me
that he had been sent to Hungary to convert his brethren. Knowing how
much the region from which he came needed some moral and religious
quickening, I timidly offered him my hand and my good wishes; but he
declined both. He "must not lean on the arm of flesh; so the Bible
says." The odour of tobacco offended his sensitive nostrils, and,
turning to the butter and egg man, who was the chief offender, he
pointed to his pipe, saying: "Throw that devilish thing away!" But a
Slav and his pipe are not so soon parted, and the butter and egg man
held firmly to his; although he smiled, not wishing to offend this
prophet in Israel. Then the luckless man pulled his whiskey bottle out
of his pocket and offered it to the ex-Dowieite, who took it, lifted it
high in air, and made an eloquent temperance address, after which he
threw the bottle out the window.
If, as a drowning man, he had refused a life-preserver, or had thrown
diamonds into the sea, his Slavic brothers would not have thought him
more reckless or insane. Palenka, as they call it, gives strength. Black
bread and palenka have kept the hard-working Slav alive, have given him
courage and cheer, and this crazy man had thrown the precious stuff
away!
Yet he was so righteously indignant, so wrought up over his heroic task,
that the peasants who had risen to remonstrate with him or to attack
him, sank back into their seats; while over them all came a solemn
silence, broken only by the grinding and jolting of the flat car-wheels.
This was the psychological moment for the prophet to declare his mission
and preach to us all, and he did. It was a fervent message; one in which
much truth and falsehood mingled, and if Dowie's spirit hovered near,
his satisfaction at hearing one of his disciples speak of the things for
which he fought and on which he throve, would have been marred only by
the fact that, for once at least, "Elijah the Second" was outdone. All
the Dowie vernacular, translated into the realistic Slavic, was let
loose by this apostle. Now it was the voice of some Old Testament
prophet which spoke; and again it was as if a John pleaded for love's
sake. Then came a jumble of words and bitter invective, which, by
comparison, caused the imprecatory Psalms to seem like the thirteenth
chapter of First Corinthians.
No sooner had the preacher resumed his seat than the spell he had woven
about his auditors was broken. The butter and egg man rose and demanded
to be reimbursed for his wasted palenka, concluding his remarks by
asserting that in America good people do drink whiskey, that everybody
drinks, and that "they make you drink whether you want to or not."
"Tak ye," so it is, said a young man, who, as far as his clothing was
concerned, might have just stepped out of an American Jockey Club. His
voice was guttural and every sentence was punctuated by oaths.
"My father keeps a saloon in Hazleton, and the policemen and aldermen
come there and drink, and at election time the burgess comes and 'sets
'em up' for everybody."
While he spoke, he jingled the money in his pockets and kept his
audience much interested by telling about his betting on horse-races,
the intricacies of the game of poker, how much money his father made on
liquor and what a high and mighty position was that of a saloon-keeper
in Hazleton. He was going to Galicia to visit his grandparents, and he
meant to show the slow town of Przemysl what it means to have a "hot
time."
At Hodonin, in Moravia, I had to leave the train; so I bade good-bye to
the interesting company.
The woman from McKeesport said, as we shook hands, "America all right,
and you bet I'm going back just as soon as I have seen to my property."
With a contemptuous glance at the young Jew, the Moravian girl said:
"Right she is! There's nothing the matter with America, and when I go
back, I bet you I'll get an American husband!"
"Oh, yes! Of course. They are lying on the shelf waiting for you!"
sneered the object of her contempt.
The sport tried to be kind in his good-bye words; but he used so many
oaths that he became repulsive. When I remonstrated, he said:
"In America, everybody swear--no make trouble to say: good-morning
your--Highness. See a man--slap him on shoulder and say:
Hello--John--you--how dy? So long, then, you--old man, good-bye."
The butter and egg man gripped my hand mightily, and as a parting word
gave me this injunction. "Don't let your old woman boss you;" then,
glancing at our prophet, he added: "He little not all right."
The Roumanian shepherd looked out the window and made no effort to take
my proffered hand. His sallow face was drawn by pain, caused by
something I dimly divined.
We were at the station, a station famous for a certain kind of sausage,
whose odorous steam soon filled our nostrils. Taking several portions
from the tray which a waiter held towards me, I gave them to the
Roumanian peasant. Like a wild beast he fell upon the food, while into
his pain-drawn face came a ray of human joy.
The prophet had difficulty in making up his mind about me. Reluctantly
he stretched out his hand as I was leaving the car. When I grasped it,
he querulously asked: "Have you received the Blessing?" and with great
assurance I answered: "You bet."
VI
THE DOCTOR OF THE KOPANICZE
The last people to feel the sweep of the tide which carried them to the
United States and back again were the mountain folk in Eastern Europe.
The Slav is naturally a plainsman, and even in the lowlands, where he
could not very well escape the force of world currents, he resisted them
as long as possible, content to follow his plough for a meagre wage.
When at last the lure of the gold grew too strong for him to withstand
its seductive beckoning, he went first from the great highways along the
main branches of railroads, and from villages on the shores of rivers;
until the ever-rising tide, with all its volume and all its good or ill,
reached the mountains.
Where in straggling villages in the Carpathians the little mud-huts are
detached, and scattered on top of the foothills in the midst of their
stony fields, these form a Kopanicze; the individual hut is called a
Kopanicza, and the inhabitants are called Kopaniczari.
They are the poor mountain folk, isolated from church and school, far
from the highways of travel, and are among the most backward, most
primitive, and most neglected of the Slovak people. Their isolation has
often bred not only ignorance but sometimes lawlessness, and, even now,
he who has no pressing business there, avoids these settlements.
Meeting a Kopaniczar on a lonely highway gives one a queer, creepy
sensation. He is a raw-boned, clumsy creature, his body wrapped in a
sheepskin coat, his head covered by a broad, felt hat, soaked in grease,
his feet encased in woolen boots; all his garments of the most primitive
home manufacture. He looks more ferocious than he is; for unless heavily
under the influence of alcohol, which does not easily affect him, he is
a good-natured human being. His superstition and his ignorance, however,
coupled with his intemperance, make him often dangerous, as is seen by
the following incident which took place last year.
A great many fires of incendiary origin occurred in one of the
settlements, and as no satisfactory clue to the perpetrator was found,
they were supposed to be the work of evil spirits. Fire in one of these
settlements is especially disastrous; for as the huts are built of
exceedingly inflammable material, everything is consumed. Such a house
usually includes in its primitive possessions a horse or a cow, and when
these are destroyed, it spells utter ruin.
One day a tourist came into this Kopanicze, the first of his kind who
had ever ventured into that isolated region. Being a tourist, he
naturally carried a camera, and as he levelled it upon the buildings,
the peasants, conceiving the insane idea that he was marking their huts
for destruction, ran out and beat him to death.
A boyhood friend of mine was appointed district physician in the upper
Trenczin district, the most poverty stricken in Hungary, largely
populated by these Kopaniczari. He was a Jew without powerful
protection, and one way of getting rid of surplus Jewish physicians was
to put them in charge of one of these regions, in which they were sure
to be out of the way of some Gentile aspirant for a large and lucrative
medical practice.
My friend had travelled the usual long and thorny road which a poor boy
has to travel in striving after a university education. His parents, who
were poor, laboured and begged and borrowed; while he tutored and
borrowed and begged; yet he found himself still within two years of a
diploma when his parents died.
Then he did the not uncommon thing; consulted a marriage broker, who
found a marriageable maiden with a dowry, and parents willing to advance
a portion of it; so that the young man could finish his education before
he led the daughter to the altar.
In Hungary, a doctor's diploma is a splendid asset in the marriage
business, and had my friend been able to wait until he really had his,
he could have commanded twice as much dowry and a handsomer maiden.
Being poor, he shared the lot of all those unfortunates who have to make
purchases on the instalment plan, be they plush albums, life insurance,
or wives.
In spite of the materialistic way in which my doctor went about getting
a bride, he was an idealist; and, consequently, doomed to have a hard
time in this exceedingly practical world. When after his marriage he was
sent to the Trenczin district, he found that the Kopanicze had as much
use for a doctor as it had for a professor of psychology. Not that the
people were never ill; on the contrary, infants born in the wretched
huts, unless remarkably well prepared for the stifling air they had to
breathe, for the hard rye bread soaked in alcohol, which often they had
to eat, and for the poppy seed concoction which they were given to keep
them quiet while their mothers were working in the fields--such infants,
and there were many--went back into the unknown soon after they came out
of it.
If they lingered, if any one lingered, before death overtook him, the
witch was the first aid brought into requisition. To cure infantile
convulsions, she would lay the baby on the threshold and cause a female
dog to jump over it three times. A specific against typhoid fever was a
vile compound made of the heart of a black cat, juniper berries, and
alcohol; while if a child had eaten poisoned mushrooms, it was hit over
the head until it either died or recovered.
Strange to say, and yet not strange, a fair proportion of robust
infants, as well as hardened adults, survived such treatment, and even
to this day there is a witch not far from the city of Vag Ujhely, who
has some degree of national fame for her healing art.
If the witch failed to cure, the priest was sent for and the proper
saints invoked for the healing. If the priest's prayers failed to
help--"What's the use of sending for the doctor?" The undertaker was
notified, and the grave-digger did the rest.
Unselfishly my friend tried to save these people. He preached the gospel
of fresh air, and in passing through one of the settlements with him,
some five years ago, I saw him break window after window (they were not
made to open) that fresh air might at least once enter the wretched
living-rooms. The result was a riot, and that night all his windows were
broken; so that for once he had more air than he desired.
There was consumption in one settlement, and he provided sanitary
cuspidors, proscribed by law; but he saw them used for culinary purposes
instead!
Vainly, he lifted his voice against the use of alcohol; he had the
innkeepers and the State against him. The State prefers to see its
people rot from poison rather than lose its revenue.
In spite of all he did, he was regarded as the enemy of the community
and not its friend; so having meddled much in business which was not
his, he could not expect a promotion, and none came.
Five years ago he had accepted poverty, neglect, and the enmity of his
neighbours as his lot in life. He had sunk into such a hopeless attitude
that neither in dress nor in habits of living could one easily
distinguish him from his ignorant neighbours. His wife was more
disappointed than he was. Had she bestowed upon him such a dowry to live
in the Kopanicze? She had expected to be the "Highborn Mrs. Dr. M----"
and taste something of the forbidden fruits of Gentile society.
Ordinarily, the physician breaks through the cast of race and faith; but
here she was, despised even by the Kopaniczari, the lowliest of the
lowly.
I left the doctor after that last visit, vowing never to see him again;
for it was an uncomfortable experience, if not a painful one.
My studies last year carried me into this very region. Since I had left
it, hundreds of men and women had gone to America and a large number had
returned home. Here, indeed, was the proper field for observation, and
the man to help me most, was my boyhood's friend.
With difficulty I found his home; for it was new, the doctor's wife was
resplendent in fine clothing, and the doctor's office, once full of dust
and cobwebs, contained new cases with new surgical instruments, and,
wonder of wonders! a dentist's machine. I had to wait for the return of
the doctor, who was visiting a patient, and had time to catch my breath;
for having come a great distance by wheel and then finding such a
surprise, proved quite overwhelming.
"What has happened here?" I asked him when he returned.
"One thing at a time," he replied. "First let's have some refreshments;"
and as we drank the delicious raspberry soda which he prepared, he said:
"If I wished to tell you in one word what has happened, I could do it by
saying: Emigration.
"It seemed almost a miracle to see the first people leaving the
Kopanicze; for neither they nor their ancestors had moved away since the
great persecution in the sixteenth century brought them here from
Bohemia.
"The letters they wrote, and which I had to read to their neighbours,
contained such glowing accounts of America that others went, until
nobody was left but the women, the children, the aged, the witch, and
ourselves. We were at the point of starvation when the first money came
from America, and with it nearly every husband, who sent it, wrote: 'If
there is anything the matter with the children, send for the doctor.'
"My first case was a scarlet fever patient. The child recovered; but the
contagion had spread. The mother whose child I had saved told everybody
that the witch with her machinations made no impression upon the fever;
while the medicine helped. I was called to other cases. In most homes I
am sure that after I left the witch was called also; but I did not care
so long as the children were given my medicine.
"Soon I was called to other villages, and as the money kept coming from
America, and the peasants gained confidence in me, my services were
greatly in demand.
"Our old house, which nearly caved in over our heads, was replaced by
this one. I still owe money on it, but I am sure I can pay the rest in a
year."
"What use do you make of this?" I asked, pointing to the well-known
object found in every dentist's office in America.
"Since the men have come back," he replied, "filled teeth have become as
fashionable as red waistcoats used to be, and I have had to learn
dentistry. And there is more money in filling teeth," he added with a
shrewd smile, "than in giving pills.
"What do I think of the effect of emigration on the Kopanicze? It has
driven out the witch, it has awakened a community which had slept for
many centuries, it has done for these people in the twentieth century
what the Reformation did in the sixteenth. And as for us, it has saved
us from starvation."
As I was about to go, I heard a peasant girl in the hall say: "I kiss
your hand, Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M----. Is the Most Mighty and
Honourable Mr. Dr. M---- at home?" And the "Most Highborn Mrs. Dr.
M----" answered triumphantly, that the Most Mighty and Honourable Mr.
Dr. M---- was at home, but busy. A gentleman from America had come to
consult him about his health; and I am sure that at that moment the
"Most Highborn Mrs. Dr. M----" felt that her dowry had been well
invested and that it was coming back with interest, through emigration
to America.
VII
"MOSCHELE AMERIKANSKY"
The Hungarian town inhabited by Magyars, does not materially differ from
the villages in which so many varieties and subjects of other races
live. Such a town is merely a larger village, and, instead of one broad
street flanked by straw thatched huts, there are at least four streets
which terminate on the "square," around which the dignitaries have built
their more pretentious dwellings. Here also are the stores, usually kept
by Jews, who are not indifferent to the economic movements of the people
whose purveyors they are.
Twenty years ago, before emigration from the district of Nyitra had
begun, the principal town in that district boasted but half a dozen
stores so called, the largest and best of which could be discovered only
by its tiny show-window, where, crowded in dire confusion, were a few
articles of general merchandise. During all the years of my comings and
goings I could never see any change in the articles displayed, nor even
by a wild flight of imagination see any indication that a duster had
lost its way among them.
It is not, however, of this store that I wish to tell, in spite of the
fact that it now has a double show-window, and contains, among many
other new things, a genuine American cash register.
The "Amerikansky Schtore" was once the meanest and smallest among all
the stores of that village. No front door led into it, no show-window
betrayed its existence, and certainly no sign-board gave a hint of what
could be purchased within. It was then owned by "Uncle Isaac," as every
one called him. He made a living out of the store; but his life came out
of the Talmud, and of course both were scanty.
Uncle Isaac's father, Reb Ephraim, studied the Talmud, and his sainted
grandfather, Reb Isaac, after whom he was named, left such a holy savour
behind him that to this day his name is reverently uttered in prayer, as
one who is surely near to God and can intercede for the children of this
generation who study less Talmud and do more business.
Uncle Isaac's forefathers, "God knows how far back," kept this same
store in the same way; for like the ring in Lessing's fable it was to be
left to the son who knew most about the Talmud, and, as a consequence,
least about the business. The Talmud had to be studied, the store ran
itself. Not that there was anything automatic about it in those days;
but Uncle Isaac, true to the traditions of his forefathers, sold only
those things which his forefathers had sold before him, namely; red
earthen pots and big green bowls which he bought from the same family in
the same town where the same peasant potteries flourished, from which
his forefathers had bought their supplies of these same red pots and
green bowls.
If a customer came to the store while the children were little and his
wife was busy caring for them (for Uncle Isaac was blessed according to
the promise made to Abraham) he had to wait until Uncle Isaac
disentangled himself from the mazes of the Talmud. Then almost
reluctantly he sold the pot or bowl, scarcely ever exchanging a word
with his customer, who was usually a peasant, and of course a Gentile
whose presence disturbed the pious atmosphere into which Uncle Isaac had
wrapped himself.
If any of the townspeople came, he was more friendly; he had to be, and
as was often the case in later days if they asked why he didn't sell
cups and saucers and wash-bowls, he would invariably shrug his shoulders
as his blessed forefathers had shrugged their shoulders before him. This
shrug was eloquent, and meant many things; but, above all, it meant:
"Have I not bother enough to remember what Rasche's (a celebrated Jewish
commentator) comment upon Rambam's (the abbreviation of another
commentator's name) comment was? How can you expect me to give my time
to such things as buying and selling wash-bowls and cups and saucers?"
His children, three boys and three girls, were nurtured in this
atmosphere. The sons began studying the Talmud when they were five years
of age, and the daughters were initiated into the mysteries of the
Kosher household before that age.
As the children grew, Uncle Isaac withdrew almost entirely from business
and gave himself more and more to the study of the holy books. The
oldest son, named after the sainted grandfather, went to Pressburg to
study for the Rabbinate, living from the charity of the faithful, by
whom the support of a pious youth is considered a great privilege.
The next son married into a rich but not pious family to whom his sacred
learning was a very welcome asset. This left the business, such as it
was, upon the shoulders of the youngest son, Moschele.
Moschele inherited less of his pious forefathers' piety and much more of
some remote ancestor's business talents, and one day he came home from a
distant market bringing with him a dozen cups and saucers and a
wash-bowl and pitcher.
Had he brought home idols made of clay he could not have hurt his father
more, and the whole town soon knew that Moschele--young Moschele whose
eyes had already rested lovingly upon the blushing faces of young
maidens--had received a beating from his father, who, in his fury, had
broken the cups and saucers, throwing the fragments at the poor,
defenseless head of the culprit. Uncle Isaac's temper was equalled only
by his piety, and the old man was beside himself.
Moschele was in the same mood, and decided to leave his old father with
his red pots and green bowls and dry Talmud. I visited Uncle Isaac's
store many a time after this event. It was less a store than ever. The
house itself was sinking into the surrounding mire, the thatched roof
was falling in on one side and sliding off on the other.
"Where is Moschele?" I asked him on one of these visits. He lifted his
weary head from the Talmud, and extricated from a pile of ancient
manuscripts an envelope printed all over with English letters, which
announced the business of Jake Greenbaum who kept the "finest General
Department Store on Avenue B." in New York. The letter in the envelope
told of Moschele's employment in the great city, and of his life there.
"Moschele, my Moschele, is in America!" And the tears began to gather in
the old man's eyes as he spoke.
"Who knows whether he eats Kosher, and whether he wears the sacred
fringes upon his breast? How I wish I could see him before I go hence!"
I promised to visit Moschele upon my return to America, and the old
man's face beamed.
"Would you mind finding out whether he eats Kosher, and whether he
wears the sacred fringes?"
I promised even that; but I did not find Moschele on Avenue B. He was up
town, on the West Side, in one of the larger department stores, where he
had entire charge of the crockery department. When I told him that I had
seen his father, he plied me with questions. I told him the condition of
affairs and urged him to return home to save his parents from utter
poverty. He promised to go if his father would attend to the Talmud and
let him attend to the business. I did not ask him if he wore the fringes
and ate Kosher, I did not need to; for we lunched together and ham
sandwich was the "pièce de résistance."
Some eight years later, my journey took me once more through Uncle
Isaac's town. The rapid changes taking place in America seemed as
nothing compared with those which I saw in this little spot in the
Carpathians. There was actually a sidewalk, a cement sidewalk, the
cement furnished by Moschele.
The old wooden pump upon which generations had expended their surplus
strength and patience to coax up the water, had given place to an air
pressure pump, sold to the town by Moschele.
In the old days, three coal-oil lamps furnished light for the miry
street (when there was no moon), and now the town had an artificial gas
plant, placed there and partly owned by Moschele. Even as in Florence,
this or that or the other is by Michael Angelo; so in this far-away
town, generations to come will remember that Moschele ushered in a new
era, if not of art, at least of civilization.
It was well worth a trip across the ocean to have looked upon Moschele
and Moschele's store. First of all was the sign in big letters,
"Amerikansky Schtore"; then the outer wall of a new building, covered by
huge illustrations of the various things sold therein--a method of
advertising made necessary because many of the peasants cannot read.
The store itself was full of all sorts of crockery and tin and
graniteware, such as had never been seen there before. And oh! the
wonder of it! Moschele had already sold one bath-tub, and carried four
patterns in stock. "I have not seen such faith, no not in Israel." He
also sold building materials, and the yard was full of everything which
could not be crowded into the store. That which especially marked the
business as American, was the fact that one price was charged to all.
Uncle Isaac had withdrawn from the world and mourned the departure of
the good old days. I found him sitting in a well-lighted, well-furnished
room, clothed in finest broadcloth; for it was the Sabbath. Everything
around him was new except the Talmud.
Was he happy? No, indeed!
"Where can a thing like this lead? Only to destruction!
"Who ever heard of such a thing as this before? Moschele rests neither
by day nor by night; he prints bills and scatters them as if money were
paper; he sleeps with an open window even in the winter, as if he wanted
to heat all outdoors, and he has even travelled on the Sabbath!"
Then the old man broke down, hid his face in the Talmud, and wept. I
think I comforted him; at least I tried to, and as I left him he
breathed a prayer for his venturesome son who had deserted the Talmud,
and the red pots and green bowls; who certainly was no longer in peril
of poverty, but in peril of his soul.
One more year passed and in visiting this town, I immediately turned my
steps towards the "Amerikansky Schtore." I found its doors closed, and
from within came sounds of bitter wailing and lamentation. I did not
need to be told that the death angel had made his sorrow-bringing
visitation, and my heart grew tender as I thought of the dear old man
who would no more bend over the Talmud and mourn the departure of the
good old times.
A Jewish house of mourning is sadder than can be described. Its
atmosphere chills one to the bone, such an air of resigned hopelessness
pervades everything. All is sackcloth and ashes; no sign of hope is
visible and but little of it lies in the hearts of the mourners.
Entering the room, where the family sat upon the ground lamenting its
dead, how great was my amazement to find that Uncle Isaac, instead of
being the one mourned for, was the centre of the group of mourners;
while the one missing was Moschele, the pillar of the household, the
founder of the "Amerikansky Schtore."
The old man stretched out both hands to me in mute welcome, and when I
sat down beside him he told me the sad story which I shall try to give
in his own words.
"Moschele is dead! What a blow! What a blow! I expected something
terrible! I knew this couldn't go on! He grew bolder and bolder, and
richer and richer. Have you seen the new store? In all Hungary there is
nothing like it. He was a genius; even his enemies admit that." Then the
old man fell into silence.
"But tell me how he died."
"He went out from among us in the morning as strong and straight as an
oak, and he was brought home felled to the ground as if struck by
lightning. God's ways are mysterious; but oh, my son, my strong, noble
son! If only he had not departed from the ways of his fathers I might
still have him.
"He went to the railroad; they had switched his car of goods where he
could not get it--he was buying goods by the carload; nothing like this
has ever been heard of before--and he wanted his car; so he helped the
men to move it. Moschele wasn't afraid of anything. The men pushed and
Moschele fell over a switch and the car went over him."
Here a paroxysm of grief silenced the old man and he swayed to and fro,
weeping piteously.
* * * * *
And again I passed through the town, and this time I went to the God's
acre with Uncle Isaac, to visit the grave of his son. In weird confusion
lay the gray and moss-grown stones. No care is bestowed upon the graves
or upon the memorials of the departed; for the body is nothing, the
spirit is everything and that is with God.
In the centre of the cemetery is a knoll, and upon its crest is a
monument such as cannot be found anywhere in Hungary. It is in the shape
of a sarcophagus, is hewn out of Vermont granite and is so heavy that it
cost over 500 kronen to bring it from the station and put it in place.
How much the stone cost no one knows except Uncle Isaac, who erected it
for his son Moschele, who wanted everything he had to come from
America--even his tombstone.
VIII
"NOCH IST POLEN NICHT VERLOREN"
It has always seemed to me wise to carry letters of introduction,
especially when travelling to the East of Europe; often, too, I have
found it still wiser to forget that I had them, for a letter of
introduction sometimes blocks avenues of investigation, particularly
when the problem in question involves the privileged or official
classes.
This time in following the immigrant tide, I carried one letter which I
was eager to deliver; it was given me by a personal friend in America
and was to be presented to his mother-in-law in Poland. Not that I was
overanxious to meet his mother-in-law, but because Polish women of the
upper class are, as a rule, so superior to the men, so ready to talk and
talk so well, that I promised myself a rather fruitful call. I did not
meet the mother-in-law yet I was not disappointed.
Cracow looks dingy even to one who, like myself, is able to illuminate
its sombre present in the light of its important if not glorious past.
Coming, as I had come, by way of industrial German-Poland, with its
glistening newness, from the
[Illustration: THE MARKET SQUARE IN CRACOW
Here Poland mourns her glorious past, and the returned immigrant assures
her of a glorious future.]
policemen's helmets to the weather-vane of the new Rathhaus; out of its
tense atmosphere of whirring wheels within wheels; out of its
geometrically correct parks and new and ever growing building additions,
Cracow looked to me as if it had fallen off this revolving planet and
settled itself "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are
at rest"--wherever that may be.
The only thing that had grown since last I saw the city was its hatred
of the Germans. On the doors of many stores on the Rinok were large
placards, which, literally translated, read: "The gentlemen travellers
from Germany, who wish to come in here to do business with us, are
politely requested to stay out."
Everything else looked the same, only more dingy; even the Austrian
officers who loaf around Havelik's restaurant seemed to have lost
something of their newness; for braid and buttons, two of the component
elements out of which Austrian officers are made, were tarnished and
worn.
The Jews' quarter seemed more hopeless and wretched than ever. On the
Kazimir were the same haggling crowds in the same small stores, and the
same shambling Jews in black, greasy cloaks. In front of the Jesuit
church stood the same twelve apostles, and I regret to say that they
were just as shabby-looking as their unbaptized brethren.
Cracow, the freest portion of divided Poland, is certainly as wretched
looking as Warsaw, where liberty dare not lift her head, and it cannot
compare with any of the cities of German-Poland where the Prussian
gendarme is trying, at the point of the bayonet, to cram German speech
down the unwilling throats of Polish children.
Why, I asked myself, should this shabbiness, this negligence, this
"run-down-at-the-heel" appearance prevail in all the Slavic cities from
Belgrade to St. Petersburg, and from Cracow to Irkutsk? Why should this
be so of every place, except where the German has stepped in with his
iron heel or where the Magyar or the Jew is trying to make of the Slav
what he is not and does not care to be?
I was tempted to take the first train out of Cracow, so painful to me
was this condition of affairs; for I admire the Slavs, although I think
I know their weaknesses. But the first train did not go until midnight,
and I had nearly eight long hours on my hands. Then I remembered my
letter of introduction. I found it with my passport and letter of
credit, and looked at it again, to assure myself that it was right. Yes,
it was addressed to the Countess So & So, and all the way to the house,
I pictured to myself my friend's mother-in-law. She would be rather
rotund, for Slavic women incline that way, especially during the full
moon of life. She would have gray hair, dark complexion, and a rather
pronounced down on the upper lip. That seems to be the tendency of the
Polish woman as she grows older; perhaps because of her great vitality.
Beneath the portal of a so-called palace, which was pervaded by an
incredibly strong smell of whitewash, I presented my card to the porter,
who looked somewhat contemptuously at the German name it bore. After
long waiting I was guided to the very top story of the house, through
clouds of falling mortar and showers of broken brick. The building
seemed to be in the possession of masons and plasterers, and the noise
they were making was as confusing as the dirt and dust their destructive
hands were creating.
Two surprises awaited me. The first was, that in spite of the fact that
the roof was partly torn off, and confusion reigned supreme, that top
story contained some of the most lavishly appointed apartments I have
ever seen. Pictures, statuary, and bric-à-brac, created by Polish
genius, costly vases, rare flowers, exquisite rugs and furniture; and
everything in perfect taste. If Cracow without seemed dingy and dead,
here it was brilliant and alive. Thus had I pictured my Slav at his
best--imaginative, creative, revelling in the beautiful, lavish of
colour, yet creating harmonies. Everything around me seemed to breathe
out life, and here I could understand the "Noch ist Polen nicht
Verloren," although in the street I had been ready to sing a requiem for
the nation.
A hundred questions passed through my brain; questions which I would ask
the mother-in-law when she appeared. Then came my second surprise. As I
sat there thrilled by contending emotions, the curtain opposite me was
thrown back gracefully and quickly, not at all as if a short, stout
mother-in-law were behind it--and my eyes fell upon one of the most
beautiful young women I have ever seen. This again was Poland at her
best, if not Poland typified. Her eyes were burningly eloquent, yet
showed a hidden pathos; her features looked as if chiselled by a
master's hand, yet, in the background, the crude touch was faintly
visible. The welcome accorded me was genuinely cordial, yet tinged by
the proper reserve.
"How is it," I asked, after some conversation, "that you don't look like
a mother-in-law, and that you speak English as if you came from Boston?"
"Because," she said, with the sweetest smile, "I am as yet only a
sister-in-law, and I do come from Boston. That is, I lived there for
years after my parents were exiled from Poland. I came back here after
my marriage."
This, then, was my chance to ask all manner of questions about the Slavs
in general and the Poles in particular, and have them answered in the
light of a rather unique experience.
"Why is Cracow a dead city?" This was certainly a perfectly familiar
American question, and I received a characteristic answer.
"It is dead because it is 'crying over spilt milk.' Nobody is regarded
as a patriot unless he talks about our past glory and blames some one in
general and the Germans in particular, for the loss of that glory. We
might do great things if we would just do them. We have the vision and
the talent; but we wear ourselves out, saying what a great people we are
and how superior to all other human beings; yet we accomplish nothing.
Look at this house of ours, and you see Poland in miniature. I don't
know just how old it is, my husband can tell you; but when it was built,
the work was poorly done, and every year it has to be repaired from the
bottom up. In America, it would have been torn down years ago, and a new
house built, to suit the needs of the times. Instead of that, my husband
is spending a fortune trying to make it a fit place to live in, and he
never succeeds.
"Yet that is the thing he enjoys. He can scold the workmen half the year
for dragging their task along, and the other half year he scolds them
for having done their work so poorly.
"You Americans enjoy being comfortable, we Poles enjoy being miserable.
If the Polish men had half the energy of the American men, we would
indeed be a great people, and Cracow would be a city worthy of our pride
in it."
I am not sure that I am recording the Countess' exact words, for to see
her talk was such an æsthetic pleasure, that I must have forgotten much
of what she said; but I give the substance of her words.
"See what America is doing for our peasants!" she continued.
"They go there lazy and shiftless, they come back thrifty and
industrious, and are rapidly taking the places of our decayed nobility.
When they come back, they have what we Slavs have always
lacked--initiative. I wish we could export to you all our stock of
Counts."
I suggested that she might try it as a business venture; for they would
bring a good price in our matrimonial market.
"Oh, no!" she replied. "We would want them back. They have talent and
devotion; they need only to learn to work, and America is the world's
great boss."
At this point in the conversation the Count entered the room. The
Countess had told me that her home was the type of Poland; she had not
told me what I soon discovered, that her husband was the typical Pole,
both physically and mentally.
He was a small man with unmistakable Polish features, which looked well
worn; for being a Polish nobleman, he had travelled through life swiftly
and indulgently. After scarcely five minutes' conversation, he began
talking about the sufferings of the Poles, and what they would do if it
were not for those wicked Germans.
Then followed what was as nearly a family jar as I care to witness. My
hostess opened wide her beautiful eyes, and, in most forceful Polish,
gave her liege lord a piece of her mind.
"I am tired of your tirades against the Germans. I don't admire their
methodical ways, myself; but they are doing things.
"Go out of Cracow to the border and look across, and you will see order
on that side and disorder on this. Step into a German train; it is clean
and efficiently managed, while our cars, from the first-class to the
third, are dirty and ill-lighted and the trains go by fits and starts.
"Go to the German towns, and you will find business flourishing; while
ours stagnates. They don't neglect art, either. Their music may be
slower than ours, but it is art; their paintings may not be as brilliant
as ours, but they are as artistic. Go to work! Do something worth while!
Build from the foundations! Develop some backbone, some character, do
better than the Germans, and then you may call them names!"
The sensitive nostrils of the husband grew wider and contracted again.
He was furiously angry; but facing him was his Americanized wife, and he
knew that "Discretion was the better part of valour"; so he permitted
his anger to cool while he nervously bit the ends of his moustache.
"Yes," he said, ignoring the Countess' outburst; "there is a great
future for us Slavs when we all get together. We were in Prague this
summer, at the Slavic Congress, and everything between us was so
harmonious that I have great hopes of a Slav Confederation. Then we will
crush our German oppressors. What do you think of it?"
I analyzed the situation thus: "As yet, the Slavs lack racial
consciousness. Each group, no matter how small, thinks itself different
from the other, and often superior to it. Not only are they divided by
small historic dissimilarities, but religious differences have obscured
racial unity to such a degree that I have but little hope that their
racial consciousness will soon ripen into tangible results.
"In the great game of politics, the Slav has given his soul as a pawn,
with which popes and patriarchs have gambled. Poland's national life has
been lost, not so much by corruption from within, as because the Pole
was used as a tool by the Roman Curia in the game of world politics she
was playing, and playing unscrupulously."
Ah! It was good to see the Countess' dark eyes dancing from pleasure,
while I thus analyzed the situation. I continued:
"The Slav either lacks sane pride in his race, or he has an overbearing
conceit; he is either easily crushed, or he crushes, ruthlessly. Look at
this daily paper. In Dalmatia, the Serbs break the windows of the
Italians, and tramp madly through the streets proclaiming their
superiority over the Latins. In Laibach, the Slovene does the same thing
to the Germans. Tears down German business signs, shoots, and is shot in
turn. In Prague, the Czechs are constantly bombarding the houses of the
Germans, until martial law has to be declared. All this, to the
detriment of the development of a rational, racial pride.
"And these same boisterous, roistering Slavs, to-morrow will cringe
before their Magyar and German masters.
"Another thing is in the way," I hastened to add; for I saw that my host
was eager to talk: "The Slavs lack collective wisdom. Where there are
three thinking Slavs, there are always three quarrels. People who wish
to rule must learn to act wisely together; yet in the history of the
Slavs this collective wisdom, this inability of one group to acknowledge
the equality of the other, has been their greatest lack.
"The Russian revolution failed, even as the Polish revolution failed,
and as the Czechs' will fail, because they lack collective wisdom. It
will take at least a hundred years," I concluded prophetically, "before
you Slavs will confederate."
My host laughed nervously. "You are a false prophet. It will come in a
decade. We will flow together like small rivers into a great stream. We
Poles, of course, being the most cultured, the most civilized, and the
best prepared to play the leading rôle, will be the stream into which
all these lesser rivers will flow. In the great overture of Slavic
union, the Pole will play the leading part."
To reason with such a man was futile; so I drank my tea and looked at
the beautiful lady opposite me, in whom the practical American and the
idealistic Pole were so harmoniously blended. Perhaps in her person she
was a prophecy of the great day to come.
The Count talked incessantly about Poland, its past, its powers, its
enemies; but I was not listening.
From my silence he thought he had convinced me, and as I rose to go, he
asked: "Have you not changed your mind about its taking a hundred years
to federate the Slavs?"
"Yes," I replied, "I have changed my mind. It will take two hundred
years; unless"--and I looked at my fair hostess--"you bring back many
more such Polish women from America."
IX
THE DISCIPLES IN THE CARPATHIANS
The river Waag has a broad and beautiful valley in which to indulge its
vagabond habits. Now it seeks a channel close to the Carpathian hills on
one side, and again rushes far away towards the mountain wall, close to
the Austrian border.
The Romans appropriately named the river "Waag," the vagabond river, and
it lives up to its reputation at all times of the year. One can scarcely
find fault with its wandering propensities, for both shore lines are
imposing and wildly beautiful; many of the little towns are
castle-crowned, while each town and each castle has its myth and story,
rivalling those of the Rhine in fantastic invention and equalling them
in historic interest.
The river Waag, however, is not in Germany, where everything is
prohibited, regulated, and subdued, even the turbulent rivers.
This is Hungary, the ill-mated spouse in that Austro-Hungarian alliance,
in which quarrels are continual, and divorce, with alimony or without
it, is threatened every day. Here rivers and races foam and rage; floods
of hate beat against historic walls and there are no smooth channels
for politics, education, or religion.
Struggle there is everywhere. Those who are too weak to fight, resist,
and none, however small or unimportant, is ready to surrender.
Among those people with strength enough to resist, but not enough to
fight, are the Slovaks, who live in wretched villages on both sides of
the river. The villages grow more wretched as they climb away from the
richer valley to the scant clearings in the mountains, where poverty,
ignorance, superstition, and intemperance are the four walls which hem
them in from the throbbing life of the century and shut them out from
it. No one climbs the almost impassable highways except the Magyar
gendarmes, who are the minions of the master race which has subdued the
Roumanians, Ruthenians, and Germans within its borders, and is now hard
at work to blot out the Slovaks, the feeble remnant of a once powerful
people.
These gendarmes are but stupid tools in the hands of a stupid
government. They erase the Slavic names of villages and paint over them
Magyar names, not even remotely related to the original; they prohibit
the Slovak language in the higher schools, fall savagely upon assemblies
of innocent folk and disperse them by force of arms, annoy unsuspicious
travellers and arrest nationalistic agitators and severely punish them.
Then they believe that they have changed sluggish Slovak blood into the
fiery Magyar fluid, obliterated age-long, historic memories, created in
a day a new patriotism, blotted out a vernacular spoken in related
languages and dialects by 100,000,000 of people and substituted for it
one spoken by a warlike people, numbering not more than 8,000,000, and
slowly emerging from Asiatic barbarism.
This they believe; but the fact is that no people were ever assimilated
by force. Force begets resistance, and the most stupid Slovak, shut in
by the four walls of his wretched isba, if he knows nothing else, knows
that the Magyar is his enemy, and that the Magyar speech must not lodge
in his memory and displace his mother tongue. Although he may have no
knowledge of his historic past and no idea of the significance of the
Slavic race of which he is a member, he _does_ know that he must resist
the Magyars, and resist, only where he cannot fight.
Two forces are at work which will soon turn this resistance into
fighting. One of them is the unbearable and unreasonable methods used by
the Hungarian government, and the other is that giant in the growing,
the returned immigrant.
The Slovak immigrant comes back less rugged but more agile; for he has
passed through trials by fire and by flood; he goes back less docile,
for he has had no masters except those that directed his daily task; his
mind is awakened, for he has read the uncensored news from the
Fatherland; news coloured more or less by the not always scrupulous
agitator; added to all this, the Slovak immigrant goes back conscious of
his racial inheritance, for he was one of a great Slavic brotherhood,
organized on this side the sea, carrying on, unhampered, its agitations
against the historic Magyar foe. Above all, he goes back with a bank
account, and money is power in business and politics alike.
Hat in hand, the Slovak used to wait patiently at the ticket window
until the Magyar station agent deigned to notice him and sell him his
third-class ticket; then, as if he were an ox being loaded for the
stockyards at Budapest, the Magyar conductor would push him into a car
crowded by his kind.
I have repeatedly seen Slovak men and women miss the only train that
could take them to the market town or from it, because the proud Magyar
official paid no attention to their repeated request for a ticket. Day
after day I have witnessed the incivilities and even cruelties they had
to suffer on the trains; but when the Slovak comes back, he knows that
the railroad official is only a servant, his servant, and he treats him
like one; he demands attention. Woe unto the bribe-taking conductor--and
there are no others on the Hungarian railways--who pushes him into a car
crowded to suffocation, while more than half the cars of the same class
are almost empty, with only here and there a passenger, who is politely
treated because he is a Magyar or because he has pressed into the
conductor's responsive hand the usual bribe.
The Slovak immigrant returns home somewhat of a rebel. The Hungarian
government knows this, and were it not for the fact that he brings back
money, and spends it freely, his emigration to America would be
forbidden.
Recently a special police force has been created to watch every outgoing
and incoming train, and every third-class passenger who has baggage
enough to mark him as an emigrant is detained, rigidly examined, and if
permitted to go to America at all, is sent _via_ the Hungarian port of
Fiume. On the way he is duly inoculated by the fact that he is an
Hungarian subject and that as such he must return.
The stupidity and the illiberal spirit of the Hungarian government are
nowhere more clearly manifested than in its relation to the religious
movements which are American in their origin and which have been
transplanted from the Alleghanies to the Carpathians. In the hands of a
truly liberal government this new force might become a constructive and
saving one to multitudes of people; instead, it is alienated, put on the
defensive and limited in its usefulness.
When the Y. M. C. A. expedition, of which I was the leader, reached the
valley of the Waag, to study the Slovak language and people, serious
difficulties to the carrying out of our plans presented themselves. The
towns have all become Magyarized by the gendarmes and a multitude of
officials. To speak the Slovak language marks one an inferior and
renders one an object of suspicion.
The village inns are merely dram-shops, kept and generally ill-kept by
Jews, who are under the influence of the Magyars, and consequently look
down upon the Slovaks. Even had it been possible for us to lodge in one
of these inns, our friendly attitude towards the Slovaks would have
forbidden it.
The gendarmes were alert and agitated from the moment we entered the
valley, and when they learned the nature of our errand they were
incredulous. "Who ever heard of anybody's having a disinterested concern
for the Slovaks? How could they believe that Americans, cold,
materialistic Americans, would equip an expedition to study the needs of
this downtrodden race, that it might be lifted up? Of course, we were
nationalistic agitators sent out by the Slovanic Society of America, to
arouse the half-awake Slovak into revolution."
That which confirmed them in this suspicion was the fact that the only
place where it was posible for us to lodge was the home of Jan Chorvat,
Apostle of the Christian faith in the Carpathians, and suspected of
being a revolutionary, because he preached to his countrymen in their
native tongue; preached to them a Gospel broad enough to embrace all
races and nationalities, strong enough to wean them from drink and free
enough to loose them from the bonds of superstition and ecclesiastical
tyranny.
The simple and perfect hospitality which Jan Chorvat and his wife
offered us was the product of that faith. Without hesitation they moved
into the basement and gave the upper rooms to their guests. The first
night of our sojourn with them, our hearts were cheered, and we felt as
if we were at home when we overheard their evening devotions. The words
of an English hymn, "My Faith Looks up to Thee," came in subdued tones
through the thick walls of the room below. Then Jan Chorvat prayed, as
only those can pray who walk consciously with God. The sentences which I
could translate from the strange tongue knitted us into an unbroken
friendship.
"I thank Thee, God, that Thou hast put it into the hearts of the
American people to send these dear brothers across the sea, that they
might learn to speak the tongue of my people so that they may serve them
in the far-away land and inspire them to become sober and chaste; good
citizens, good husbands, and good brothers.
"May these young brothers learn, above all, to love my people with the
passion of Jesus, so that they will be able to lead them to the source
of all redemptive power--Jesus Christ."
Jan Chorvat and his wife, in their outlook upon life, in the strength of
their convictions, in their passion for righteousness, would have fitted
easily into the church of the Puritans anywhere on this side the sea,
where Puritanism is still at its best. In his asceticism Jan Chorvat
reminded us of John the Baptist, in the sweetness of his temper of the
Beloved Disciple, and, in his zeal and passion for Christ, of the
Apostle to the Gentiles.
Here was a Slovak who spoke English almost perfectly, who wrote his
native language classically, who clung to a noble faith passionately;
yet that which bound us to him closely and I must regretfully admit,
most closely, was the fact that Jan Chorvat was what he was, because of
certain religious influences emanating from America. These influences
and ideals, which are slowly growing stronger, are being augmented and
reënforced by returning immigrants who come home with a passion for
their kinsmen, eager to redeem them from their individual and national
sins.
The centre of this religious movement is in O Tura, one of those
mountain villages isolated, but brought into the world's current by
mighty ideals; fit birthplace of a new hope.
Here a Protestant pastor ministered in the more or less stereotyped
forms of the established faith, and, when he died, left three daughters,
the "Roy Sisters," to carry on his work for the people he loved.
Hampered by a strict orthodoxy and a suspicious government, they
hungered with their people and for them, unconscious of a larger faith
and a better way; until so commonplace a thing as a religious newspaper,
published by the missionaries of the American Board at Prague, found its
way to them.
Our credulity has been so severely tested by the narratives of
missionaries who hinged mighty consequences upon trivial causes, that
here too one is assailed by doubt; until one reads Christina Roy's
little story: "How I came to the Light."
In simple yet graphic language, she tells of her life in the parsonage,
her father's struggle against adverse conditions, her own budding
ideals, and finally the important moment when for the first time she
came in touch with the vital truths of Christianity as presented in the
little Bohemian newspaper, _Bethania_. Upon so slender a thread
travelled this mighty current which gave direction to her own life,
which has enabled her to enlarge the vision of an oppressed peasantry,
and which is now encouraging her and the noble group of men and women
around her to attempt the almost hopeless struggle against
intemperance.
Whether one agrees with the type of theology which these people preach
or not, one can but feel that they are in touch with real spiritual
forces, and that, by the test of character and of work accomplished, we
who travel faster in the paths of what we call progress, are compelled
to halt and admire.
The students who were the members of my expedition were nearly all
recent college graduates and had left their schools with much of their
traditional faith unsettled. Any doubts they may have had regarding the
doctrine of the Incarnation, as it is commonly interpreted, were lost,
when they saw the spirit of Jesus dominating the lives of simple
peasants whose dull faces have become radiant, whose animal appetites
have been controlled, and whose homes have become the abodes of peace
and happiness.
To look into the faces of the "Roy Sisters," of Jan Chorvat and his
wife, and of hundreds of peasants who come to hear the Gospel preached
in true simplicity, was a better definition of the doctrine of the
Incarnation than any professor of theology can give.
The Atonement, as defined by our orthodox churches and which is such a
stumbling-block to the rationalistic mind, lost all its mystery in
watching another member of this group, John Rohac[ve]k, at work among
the gypsies; loving those whom no one loves, living with them in huts by
the wayside and trying with a divine passion to lift them out of
age-long Paganism into a wholesome relation to the doctrine: "Without
the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin."
Although John Rohac[ve]k believes with all his simple soul that "Jesus
paid it all," he is willing and eager to shed his blood for God's
despised children, those most neglected of all, the gypsies. For them he
has suffered persecution, imprisonment, hunger and thirst, in the true
apostolic spirit; and although those American students may never be able
to explain to themselves the meaning of the Atonement, they certainly
will never be able to say that they have not seen the Atonement "at
work."
Here among the Slovaks, the seed sown by the American missionary at home
and abroad has brought forth more vital fruit, perhaps, than on the home
soil. Although these Slovak disciples have gone out to save only this
one or that one, they are helping to save a nation and are lifting a
race out of degeneration.
Nominally, Jan Chorvat was a teacher in the Slovak language to our
expedition; and to learn the more effectually, my students often went
with him on his tours from village to village. As they walked, he
explained to them the grammar
[Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE TATRA MOUNTAINS]
and enriched their vocabulary. How much of the difficult Slovak language
they will remember when they come to their task in Pennsylvania, I do
not know; but they can never forget the lessons he taught them by his
singleness of purpose, his devotion to his people, and his fearless
approach to those who he thought needed his admonition. Those students
will surely remember that "Though they speak with the tongues of men and
of angels, and have not love, it profiteth nothing."
The last day of our stay in Hungary brought us early to a village at the
foot of the Tatra mountains, the village of Czorba. Leaving our
uncomfortable third-class carriage in which we had spent the night, we
were quickly revived by the ozone-laden mountain air, and by the
marvellous sight which greeted our eyes. Here were the giant mountains
of Hungary which she has proudly pictured highest on her escutcheon.
That which most quickened us, however, as a group of strangers, was the
greeting extended to us by three men waiting in the early dawn. They had
come many miles on foot to meet us, and carried huge loaves of rye bread
and bottles of milk for our refreshment. They were to guide us to the
top of the mountain. The three men belonged to three antagonistic races
of Hungary, and we were Americans, a conglomerate of races; Teutonic,
Semitic, and Celtic. Together we broke bread, prayed, sang, and
exchanged thoughts about the vital things of life.
The man who appeared to be the leader of the group, the brightest and
happiest of the three, the one with the largest outlook on life, was a
Slovak who had found his vision and his happiness in America. He worked
in a blacksmith's shop in Torrington, Conn. Here some one with a passion
for common men ministered to him and led him from drunkenness to
sobriety, and from his coarse animal existence into fellowship with the
divine. He returned home and is daily at his task of shoeing horses and
mending broken ploughshares; but he never forgets that what carried him
back among his people was his awakened passion for them.
At the forge, he preaches the gospel of sobriety, of industry, and of
peace; and, as he welds broken iron, so he is trying to weld into union
the three alien races that battle round the foot of the Tatra. The task
is difficult, and it will be slow.
The stupid and materialistic Hungarian government is trying to
accomplish this task by throwing people into prison, because they love
their mother tongue, or do not lightly regard their historic
inheritance.
The Slovak Christian will certainly accomplish more than the gendarmes
for the unification of these alien peoples in Hungary; for the Gospel
is more powerful than guns and bayonets.
As we parted from our new friends that last day, we sang: "Blest be the
Tie that Binds." The gendarmes, who were watching us, thought we were
singing some revolutionary "Marseillaise," and in that they were not
mistaken; for there is nothing more revolutionary than the force which
"Binds our hearts in Christian Love."
X
THE GUSLAR OF RAGUSA
It is a long time since I first saw Dalmatia, on the eastern shore of
the Adriatic. Her hills were denuded of verdure, monotonously barren and
ashen gray, with a bit of Paradise here and there along the edge of the
sea. In silence, her ancient cities mourned a turbulent past of which
they were reminded by walls and palaces which the Romans built, as only
the Romans knew how to build.
Although these walls have felt the force of Venetian battering-rams, of
French, Turkish, and Austrian cannon-balls, they still stand, silent
witnesses of a civilization which carried culture in the path of its
conquest, and brought a certain kind of liberty to its captives. The
Venetians took away these liberties, and, in exchange, gave the
Dalmatians churches, whose graceful campaniles tower over the gray and
solid Roman walls.
The French came and went; but, far as the eye can see, left nothing
behind them.
Austria brought soldiers who are still there; nesting in the forts,
commanding the mule-paths
[Illustration: COAST OF DALMATIA
From here, come virile children, of the stony soil, to mine our coal and
dig our trenches.]
and seaways and hated by the native population, which is Slavic with a
sprinkling of Italian, both races being antagonistic to the ruling
power.
That Dalmatia has been badly governed, no one denies. It has been
purposely kept out of touch with the mainland, the old motherland behind
it, Croatia. Only by the sea had it access to other peoples, to whom it
rarely went and who seldom came to it.
Of all Dalmatian cities, Ragusa is the proudest, even as it is the
poorest. Once the seat of a virile republic, she sent out armadas for
conquest, watched from her sea-girt walls the struggles between Venice
and the Ottomans, and, by force of arms, helped to decide the destinies
of nations.
Ragusa's glory was short, but memory is long; although her harbour is
choked and useless, her sea-wall in ruins, and her pavements
grass-grown; still under marble porticoes half-sunk into the ground, sit
the grandees of the city, smoking the Turkish _czibuk_ and musing over
those golden days when Ragusa called herself the "Queen of the Adria,"
and fought with Venice for its supremacy.
On the corner of the Stradona and the Piazza, there stood all day long
an old minstrel, who strummed monotonous strains on the _gusla_, while
he sang the epics inspired by centuries of conflict. As he sang, the
grandees smoked and mused; while the lesser folk cobbled _opankee_,
embroidered garments after Oriental fashion, and wove tiny strands of
silver into crude filigree.
The old _guslar_ was minstrel, poet, and historian. It was he who told
me marvellous stories of the time when in each of those palaces on the
Stradone there lived a statesman-soldier, at war politically with one
half his world and in social rivalry with the other half. The city's
gentlefolk were divided into the _Salamanchesi_ and the _Sorbonnesi_;
those who sent their sons to the University of Salamanca and those who
sent them to the Sorbonne.
These divergent cultural currents kept the nobility apart and gave ample
cause for petty quarrels; many a Ragusan Romeo's love for his Juliet has
furnished material for a romance and for a beautiful funeral.
Against these old walls and old traditions the immigrant tide has been
beating for the last ten years, carrying away the grandee's sons,
numbers of whom are now digging coal in Pennsylvania, or waiting on
table in some cheap restaurant in New York. Yet, whether he lives in a
wretched boarding-house in a Pittsburg "Patch," or accepts the modest
tip his patrons give him, the son of a Ragusan grandee never forgets his
nobility.
These immigrants, too, have gone home again, and make their presence
felt, economically and socially. They have repaired the old palaces and
brought money into circulation; but the old _guslar_, who stood on the
corner of the Stradona and the Piazza, and whom I sought out after these
ten years, had his story to tell.
"Yes, Signor, many have gone to America and have come back, and will go
again; but, Signor, that must be a bad country, a wild country. They
come home and walk carelessly up and down the Stradona, the finest
street in the world, every house a palace--and they talk of it with
disrespect!
"Why, Signor, they say that in America there are finer streets than
this, and bigger houses, and they laugh at the _Dogana_, Signor--at the
_Dogana_, where our _Principes_ and our _Consiglios_ made treaties with
the great powers, where we received the ambassadors of the Sultan and of
the Doges of Venice!
"Signor, they walk up and down the street with their heavy-soled shoes,
talking loudly, and making such a noise that the grandees cannot take
their siestas undisturbed.
"Yes, Signor, there are some of them here now. They came back a
fortnight ago, a man and his two daughters. A good-for-nothing he is,
Signor. Think of it! Ah, listen!" He paused abruptly. I listened. The
sweet, harmonious quiet was rudely broken; the air, full of the
fragrance of oleander blossoms, seemed suddenly vitiated; the Monte
Sergio and the swaying palms beneath it, which made so marvellous a
picture, seemed to drop with a crash out of their frame of sky and sea.
"Signor, listen!" And the old _guslar_ trembled from anger and pain. It
was the grinding of a phonograph which struck our ears. "Listen, Signor!
That they bring out of America! Out of your barbaric country!"
True enough; they were the painfully familiar notes of "canned ragtime"
at its worst.
"Signor, that man has come back with his two daughters. They can't speak
a word of their mother tongue; and oh, Signor! they walk up and down the
Stradona without a duenna, they look boldly at the men, and they keep
their jaws moving constantly, even when they do not speak.
"The father drinks, he drinks maraschino by the bottleful and he defiles
the pavements of our ancient streets by his polluted spittle. You want
to go to see him?" The _guslar_ looked deeply hurt. He feared that the
phonograph had lured me from him.
"No, I shan't go until you play and sing for me."
He took his _gusla_ and moved his bow gently over its single string,
while he sang of "Mustapha who came riding on a dapple gray stallion,
with thirty Pashas as his escort. He struck a glass of wine from the
hand of a Servian hero, who vowed that he would shed the black blood of
the Turk," which, after many monotonous verses, he did.
"Signor, I can't sing very well--ah, there it is again!"
While he had been singing about Mustapha, who died so many years ago,
the phonograph bawled lustily about "Tammany, Tammany," which,
unfortunately, is very much alive.
I made my peace with the _guslar_ by putting into his hand a liberal
fee; then I followed the sound of the phonograph which had been switched
from "Tammany" to the song of "A nice young man, that lives in
Kalamazoo."
On the lower floor of a house in one of the small streets which divide
the Stradona, I discovered the phonograph and its owner, a man neither
of the nobility nor noble. His knowledge of America extended as far as
Brooklyn and the Austro-Italian docks, near which he had established a
boarding-house. Of course, he had come home rich, and only for a visit.
"Who could live in Ragusa after Brooklyn?"
He told me that he made a great deal of money selling liquor, and
acknowledged that he sold it without a license. Besides that, the
sailors brought over various articles for which he found a ready market.
His case would not be worth recording were it not for the fact that he
may be looked upon as a man who has been spoiled by his sojourn with
us. I doubt, though, that there was anything to spoil; evidently, he was
a man of poor breeding and low moral standards. In America, he had found
an outlet for his evil tendencies, and a bad business which offered
opportunities for lawlessness.
His daughters were more interesting than he; for they came back perfect
strangers, into the environment which they had left as children. They
had quite forgotten Italian and spoke Serbo-Slavic very poorly; while
their English was typical.
"Golly! But Ragusa is a bum town!"
The Adriatic shore could not be compared with the sea they knew,
bordered as it was by Coney Island.
"No, sir-ree! Give me Coney Island, and you can have this two for a
cent, Gravoosa." And I suppose, the peninsula of Lapad also, circled by
palms and olives and set in a sea of turquoise blue.
When I mentioned the _guslar_, one of the girls said that he "might make
a hit at Coney Island as a side-show."
"Were there many Dalmatians in America?" I asked the father.
"You bet! They have gone from along the whole ---- coast, and there is
one ---- little town near Lucin Piccolo where there is not an able-bodied
man left. They'll all come over when they get the ---- money. The more
come the better for me."
His place was the centre to which they came and from which they
radiated.
"What do they do in America?" I asked.
"Oh! any old thing. It all depends. There is one back here now."
"He's a regular big head," interrupted one of the girls; "thinks he's
the whole cheese. He's a newspaper man. I suppose he'll be on the
Stradona to-night."
Every evening after sunset, all Ragusa wakens out of its day-dreams and
is on parade in the Stradona.
Demure maidens come out from behind latticed windows, reflecting in
their garments the sombre hues borrowed from Venice, and a riot of
Oriental colours. They are dark-eyed creatures, these maidens, and their
faces, as well as their garb, show the mixture of Latin and Slav; for
this is the battling-ground of the two races, the persistent Slav being
in the ascendency.
The youths followed at a distance; for propriety is one of the assets of
Ragusan society.
Noiselessly they walked up and down over the grass-grown pavement, and,
when one heard the heavy-soled shoe striking it, one recognized the
stranger; and by that sign I knew the Ragusan-American newspaper man. A
graceful, swarthy young fellow he was, upon whose face his new
environment had already written its story.
His eyes had lost their melancholy look, for he had escaped the thraldom
of the past and seemed like a man fully awake to the present. When we
met, he looked at my shoes, I looked at his, and the contact was made.
Interesting, indeed, his story was, beginning with his running away from
home, one of those ancient palaces on the Stradona. His assets were:
money enough to take him to Triest, third-class, a large stock of
inherited pride, and nothing else.
At that time there was no passenger service from Triest, but there were
freight steamers and a chance to serve as steward to the officer's mess.
Three weeks of life on the sea and then New York. There he served his
apprenticeship in the art of "getting along" by walking up and down
Broadway, hungry and cold, sleeping in "Sailor's Boarding Houses," and
finally in the police station.
At last came a turn in his fortunes, through getting work as a
strawberry-picker in New Jersey, then working in a restaurant in
Pennsylvania as waiter and cook. After much chance and change, he had
become the owner of an Italian newspaper, whose chief object was to
chronicle the happenings in the Fatherland, for the edification of his
countrymen.
It had been a rough road, but it was worth the struggle; for it led to
usefulness and into life. He thought that his countrymen always
experienced unusual difficulties in America.
"The masses of them are illiterate to an alarming degree; bound by
traditions, tribal in their social outlook, and serve as so much carrion
for those birds of prey, the steamship companies' agents, the _padrone_,
the boarding-house keeper, the saloon, and the venal justice of the
peace."
Our national moral character he interpreted in the light or the
experiences of his countrymen, and his judgment was not a flattering
one. Yet he admitted that America is a blessing to Dalmatia. It has
relieved bitter poverty, mentally awakened the people, and has broken
down worthless traditions.
In Dalmatia, as elsewhere, the returned immigrant has sharpened the
hunger for political liberties, and has intensified the struggle between
the oppressed and the oppressor.
Wherever the government was aided by the reactionary church, the people
left the church. This is especially true of the northern towns of the
peninsula, between Zara and Triest.
"Yes, indeed! The returned immigrant causes much trouble, and I am no
exception. I wound my parents by my democratic ways, and I have
forgotten many of the niceties of their social life.
"Yes, it was I who hurt the _guslar's_ feelings by telling him that
there are streets in New York finer than the _Stradona_, and houses
bigger than the _Dogana_. Ah, yes; the returned immigrant causes both
sorrow and annoyance. Just watch that man and his two daughters."
There they were; the man from Brooklyn, garishly attired. His daughters
walked proudly beside him, heedless of the fact that over those
pavements generations of Ragusa's great men had walked to victory or to
death.
The Brooklyn man seemed quite oblivious of the fact that these people
whom he passed so carelessly were the sons and daughters of nobles and
heroes. He did not lift his hat to them or step aside to let them pass;
his daughters occupied more than their share of space, with their
gorgeous and exaggerated hats, and smiled encouragingly on the young men
whom they met, although strangers to them.
Later, there was much discussion of these "Americans," among those who
spend the evening at the "Café Arciduca Federigo"; smoking, singing,
sipping _granite_, and talking about the good old days, those quiet,
dreamy days which they had spent on this matchless spot, watching the
sea as it encircled with its phosphorescent splendour the Island of
Lacroma, or when, beaten by the Bora, it lashed itself into fury against
the ancient walls.
The young newspaper man told me much about the pride and poverty of his
countrymen, of their love for this fair spot, of their moral standards,
and their unbroken word.
The _guslar_, standing in front of the café, began tuning his Jeremaic
instrument, looking wistfully, as he did so, at the stranger who had
given him so liberal a fee. He needed but slight encouragement to begin
his plaintive recitative. A few lines clung to my memory; for they
fitted so well into my conversation with the young Ragusan:
"Go out and sing of right and truth,
Of valour and of manly strife;
Better far, thy tongue grow mute
Than that thou sing of baser life
For common gain."
In the middle of a verse, he dropped his instrument hopelessly.
"Oh, Signor! These terrible Americans! Listen!"
The quiet of that matchless night was being assailed by the awful
refrain of: "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night."
"Ah, me, Signor! This will be my ruin! All the young men are at that
man's house drinking like beasts; they no more care for me, or for the
heroic songs of their ancestors, and while they used to give me
_kreutzer_, they now give me _heller_, if they give me anything."
The old minstrel sighed profoundly and disappeared into the darkness,
his _gusla_ under his arm; while from the tin horn poured a medley of
songs, the climax of which was: "A nice young man that lives in
Kalamazoo."
The sorrowful old man and his grief made me feel guilty, as if I were
responsible for that terrible, torturing, unmusical outburst which
disturbed the peace of the wonderful night.
After the _guslar_ had left us, the newspaper man rowed me in his
father's _barquetta_ across the shallow harbour, as far as the shadow
cast by the gigantic palm trees on the shore. Every time his oars dipped
into the water they brought to the surface a flame of fire; yet amid all
the splendour of that night, I could think of nothing but the sad old
musician.
Many months passed and I had quite forgotten the _guslar_ of Ragusa.
Again I was at the seashore; but it was the turbulent Atlantic--not the
sunny Adriatic; Coney Island--not Lacroma.
Many confusing strains of music were in deadly conflict with one
another; myriads of glowing lights encircled grotesque buildings of all
descriptions; through streets given over to pleasure, crowded in one day
nearly as many people as there are inhabitants in all Dalmatia.
I certainly did not think of Dalmatia, until I stood before an "Oriental
Palace of Pleasure," in front of which I saw the man from Brooklyn,
resplendent in a gorgeous Oriental costume, "barking" to the multitude
the sensuous pleasures which could be enjoyed within "for the small sum
of one dime, only ten cents."
When he paused for breath, I heard peculiar, strange, and yet familiar
music. Following the sounds, I found on a balcony, in a blaze of
electric lights, the _guslar_ of Ragusa. When he finished playing, he
too cried: "Tenee cenee, onlee tenee cenee! C-o-m-e een! Only tenee
cenee!"
XI
WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES
Prince Nicolas of Montenegro does not remember me, and why should he? It
was many years ago, and I was one of 20,000 guests who suddenly
descended upon his little capital of 5,000 inhabitants, during its
national festivities in honour of the Prince of Bulgaria.
Cetinje's two modest hostelries, in which under normal conditions twenty
strangers might have found crude comforts, were packed from cellar to
garret with the entourage of the royal guest. The rest of us, mostly
natives and a few strangers, roving about the odd corners of Europe,
were sheltered in private homes, hospitably thrown open by Cetinje's
citizens, who still believe in hospitality as a virtue, which they
practice on all occasions.
I did not know until the morning after my arrival that my host was the
Minister to the Exterior. The Interior, being so small, needed no
minister, I suppose. His house, a rude stone structure, was only a
degree better than that of the peasant; the bed was softer than his, for
it was not the stone floor. The food was practically the same; a
monotonous diet of maize bread and mutton, the staple food of rich and
poor alike, except that the peasant eats only the bread and sells the
mutton.
To find that my boots were blacked by a relative of the Minister to the
Exterior, and that by virtue of being his guest I was also to be a guest
at the banquet given by Prince Nicolas in honour of his princely
visitor, produced in me no little feverish excitement; revealing the
fact that I was a mere mortal, and as much pleased by my aristocratic
surroundings and the prospect of royal favour, as if I were not a
student of social phenomena with a strong bias towards democracy.
It is of no consequence to chronicle these facts here, except that they
led to a passing acquaintance with the Prince and his family. His
youngest son was then a growing youth of exceedingly lovable character.
At that time the Queen of Italy was a visitor in her father's simple
home. The Prince is a writer of some ability, and I was glad to be able
to tell him that I was familiar with his contributions to Serbic
literature.
The royal favour accorded me stood me in good stead; for not only could
I watch the pageant and other festivities from a splendid vantage
ground, but it proved very helpful in my journey through the
principality, which I traversed from Nyegusi to Lake Skutari, and from
the Albanian Alps to the Herzegovina.
The country seemed like a huge eagle's nest, perched amid inhospitable
mountains. Here all men were warriors, from the time they were weaned
from their mother's breast, until they sank into their rock-hewn graves.
The women reared the young, tilled the bit of precious soil found among
a waste of boulders, and carried mutton carcases to the market at
Podgoricza or Cattaro, the largest trading town in Dalmatia. On the
return home, they brought coffee and spring water, the two luxuries of
those arid mountain heights. These poor homes, although rarely better
than stables, sheltered people full of heroism, hospitality, and
primitive social virtues; as well as a passionate hatred for the
"Schwab," their Austrian neighbour, and the Turk, their ancient foe.
The men lived in anticipation of war, not much caring whom they fought;
for peace meant a stagnant poverty, while war held glory and pillage.
It was the day of the farewell festivities for the Bulgarian Prince,
that the peasant subjects of Prince Nicolas passed in review before
their patriarch, who was the supreme judge and arbiter of their fate.
The menials kissed the hem of his coat, while the heads of different
tribes kissed his cheek. Each man in passing before his lord told his
troubles openly, and waited for the word of cheer or of judgment.
With little variation they all told of utter poverty--the kind of
poverty which meant that from the month of August until the next autumn,
there would be no bread; for the crops had failed. There was no prospect
of relief, the Prince himself being poor and in debt; and the country
had no resources.
I proposed emigration as a remedy, and rather impatiently the Prince
dismissed the suggestion, saying that every warrior was of value in this
mountain fastness; soldiers were its one asset, and they might at any
moment be needed by their godmother, Russia, if not by himself.
Soldiers we did not need, I told him; the war with Spain was over, and
even during its progress, we had soldiers to spare; but if his men would
learn to "turn their spears into" crowbars, and "their swords into"
shovels (taking liberties with a prophetic utterance) they would find
opportunity for work, if not for valour; for a good wage, but not for
pillage.
I knew they would come and they did. An apostolic band of twelve men
first; seventy and more, following; three hundred on the next steamer,
after which a temporary check. The three hundred, having violated the
contract labour law, were sent home.
Then, like a flood, too long held back, came thousands, scattering
through the Alleghanies and the Middle Western plain, as far as the
Missouri River, and into California, where a colony of many hundreds at
Los Angeles is in Paradise; although first they went through many a
purgatory.
Ten years, and ten times ten years, which in Montenegro's past were more
or less glorious, had left the country practically unchanged; except as
the present ruler had tried to root out some of its latent barbarisms.
Here Slavic traditions at their best were immovably intrenched, and here
were the bulwarks against the best and the worst in our civilization.
Neither steam nor electricity, those destroyers of archaic simplicity,
had yet entered the country, nor had our vulgarities of French dress and
morals driven out the simple virtues or the picturesque national garb,
worn by the Prince and by the peasant.
On all sides, Montenegro's neighbours, the Albanians, Bosnians,
Herzegovinians, and even her brother, Servia, in the lowlands of the old
cradle home--had all yielded, in a greater or lesser degree, to
Mohammedan influences. Montenegro alone remained an unsealed fortress,
in which the crescent never supplanted the cross; nor did the horse's
tail wave from its flag-staff, on which once and forever had been
unfurled the victorious colours--red, black, and white.
The dawn of the twentieth century found the principality still Homeric
and patriarchal, but the brief years since its opening have been
significant ones. During those years her sons for the first time left
"their crags and unsealed passes" to go out upon so base an errand as
seeking work across the Atlantic, later to return with the booty of a
bloodless conquest.
About ten years after my last visit to Montenegro, I was again
journeying towards it upon that serpentine road from whose every winding
the truly matchless bay can be seen, receding with every turn, hemmed in
more and more by the chalk cliffs which look like petrified clouds.
Almost barren of verdure they are, but full of an awful majesty; until
they blend with the bay, when one can see beyond them the blue Adriatic.
The ships upon her bosom are moved by a gentle _sirocco_, while the
islands on the Dalmatian coast, hidden in the shining green of the olive
and the yellower tints of fig leaves, make patches of colour which seem
to be floating away in the mist rising at noontime from the sea.
Suddenly one turns northward and faces gray stones, walls of stone,
fields of stone--nothing but stone--and that is Montenegro. My peasant
driver told me that when God made the earth, He saw that He had made it
good, with the exception of the stones, of which there were too many. He
called His angel Gabriel and told him to take a bag as large as the ends
of the four winds and go down to earth, pick up the surplus stones and
cast them into the sea.
The devil, who delighted in the stones and the trouble they would give
humanity, flew after the busy angel.
When Gabriel had picked up all the superfluous stones on earth, and was
about to drop them into the Adriatic, his Satanic Majesty took his
pocket knife, cut a hole in the angel's bag, and all the stones dropped
on to that part of the earth where Montenegro is situated.
The peasant's story accounts for the topsy-turvy position of the stones;
now piled high as mountains, then solid walls of stone, and, again, huge
boulders scattered about, with plenty of smaller ones between. There are
some fertile spots, especially the famous _Brda_, where flocks find
pasture; and there is an occasional field large enough for a horse to
turn with its plough. Most of the country, however, is barren, and it is
from this bleakest mountain region that the exodus to America has taken
place.
At Nyegusi, as usual, there was an hour's wait, and a chance to refresh
the inner man with cheese and coffee. In this primitive hostelry one
noticed the first evidences of the changes wrought. Nyegusi, the
birthplace of the Prince, under the shadow of the historic Lovczin, has
been more drained of its men in these times of peace than ever it was in
time of war.
[Illustration: WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES AND NOW DROPS DOLLARS
A typical landscape in a district of Montenegro, from which immigration
has set in.]
When last I passed through it, there stood before every one of the
wretched stone huts a giant-like figure, attired in his native costume,
which, according to Montenegrin standards, was worth a fortune, and did
indeed represent its wearer's wealth. Ancient and costly weapons
protruded from his belt, generously wound around his portly body. Thus
armed, he paraded up and down the rocky streets of Nyegusi, or lounged
in the village inn, smoking cigarettes and drinking his _raki_, if he
had the wherewithal.
At the time of which I write, the streets were deserted, save for the
women, who bent beneath their heavy burdens of wood which they bring
down from the ravines in the Lovczin mountain.
Old men sat wearily on the stone walls which surrounded their small
fields, and every one told of a son who had gone "to Amerikee."
One toothless woman could tell her age only approximately, by the number
of sons she had borne; and there were eighteen. Ten of them were in
America; the others had been killed in border warfare.
In this same town I met a mother of twenty-two sons, twenty of whom had
lost their lives in battle. The two survivors were the innkeepers of
Nyegusi. The inn itself was the same as when first I saw it, with its
beaten earth floor, and walls bare, except for the _icon_, a splendid
bit of Byzantine workmanship; but since I drank the excellent coffee
there, ten years ago, more than 5,000 braves have been under its roof,
bound for my own country or returning from it. Now the room is full of
them, all homeward bound, spending money far too freely in drinking and
gambling; two vices which, although taken with them from their
mountains, they bring back in exaggerated form.
I must confess to a sense of disappointment when I saw them beside the
Montenegrin who had remained at home. The sombre dress of our
civilization was a poor exchange for the brilliant, native costume. The
hard labour the men performed in America had robbed them of their erect
and elastic forms, and they looked like the menials of their brothers
who had been keeping watch against the "Schwab," in the shadow of the
Lovczin.
The change was not unlike that which has taken place in the American
Indian who left the war-path to repair the steel path of the railroad.
The men in the inn, nearly thirty of them, belonged to all parts of the
little realm, from Niksic in the North and Grahova on the Herzegovinian
border, to Cetinje and Podgoricza, its centre. They had gone out in
neighbourhood groups, members of one tribe; but, returning, had become
badly mixed. Some in the original group had failed, while others had
succeeded; some decided to remain in America, others were glad to come
home.
Most of those in the inn had been West, and knew only the rigorous side
of our industrial life, and to no European people could the experience
have been so trying; while none could have adjusted itself less easily
to it.
The complaints as registered in Cetinje were many, and on the whole
justified. They may be classified as follows:
Cheated by Employment Agencies 80%
Cheated by Austrian boarding-house keepers 60%
Money lost by giving bribes to Irish-American
bosses who promised jobs which were never given 36%
Rough treatment by bosses 72%
Robbed by railroad crews in Montana 80%
"Shanghaied"--made drunk and railroaded
from St. Louis to Southern Kansas 15%
Robbed of money and tickets before departure
for home 40%
This represented the dark side of the experience of the Montenegrin
immigrant. The brighter side cannot so easily be classified. As with
other groups, so with those; America meant an enlargement of their
horizon. Most of them had earned money and meant to buy land; some of
them had an eye to the undeveloped mineral wealth of their country, and
two carried home enriched lives through having attended an evening
school, where they had learned to read and write some English.
All were still loyal sons of their mountain home, and only three of the
thirty in the inn meant to try their luck again.
The innkeeper thought emigration a great boon, and it was, to him; for
the emigrants all passed through Nyegusi whether they came or went, and
that meant revenue.
Externally, Cetinje, the capital, is still the same; although there the
greatest change has taken place since my last visit. Cetinje now has a
parliament, and its post-office officials have something more to do than
smoke cigarettes. Its storekeepers are enriched by the inflow of money;
the women respond to the new spirit; for a comparatively large number is
going to America, and a few have already gone. The men, especially the
old peasants, find this new spirit most trying. One of them, in a little
stone hut at Kolasin, said: "The women come home after three years'
absence and the devil has got into them. They _sit_ in my presence and
demand to eat when I do!
"What kind of country is that anyway which encourages such things? Is it
a woman's country?"
I met one woman whose son I knew in the "States." He is one of the few
that have prospered, and he means to stay. His mother's little cottage
on the outskirts of Cetinje shows plainly the influence of America.
On the walls hang many gaudy calendars, and a crayon portrait of her
son, in an elaborate frame.
"Tell me," she said, as she pointed to a bulky newspaper printed in
Scranton, Pa., and sent by her son, as a curiosity, "how many weeks does
it take them to read it?"
Her son sends her ten dollars every month, which means fifty kronen.
"Only the good Princess has so much money of her own!" the proud mother
said; and I am not so sure that even the Princess has it.
There must be many such huts; for the postmaster told me that $30,000
came into this little rocky nest in one year; more money than passed
through the hands of that postmaster in twenty preceding years. In a
country so impoverished, this money cannot help being a blessing.
It is true, that after a brief glimpse of Montenegro I left it with
feelings decidedly mixed as to the benefits it has derived from
emigration. The Prince is less a patriarch than he was and not so
accessible to his subjects; for he has felt the force of a revolution,
small but significant.
The grand opera setting of the villages and towns is being destroyed;
men no more strut about like stage heroes, waiting for their cues. The
picturesque is going, is almost gone, and will go entirely; poverty,
extreme poverty, pinching, grinding poverty is going too, and will soon
disappear. Men drink more fiery _raki_ and gamble more; women are
beginning to lift up their heads and walk _beside_ the men, not _behind_
them. I am convinced that the relative of the Minister to the Exterior
would not now black my boots; for which I rejoice, although the old
braves complain and say: "America is a woman's country."
Montenegro, hemmed in on three sides by Austria and on the other side by
Turkey, and all around by poverty, has found an outlet and relief by way
of the sea. Progress has come slowly and from far away and she must pay
the price; yet when all is considered, she ought to be glad to pay it.
In talking to the postmaster of Cetinje, I referred to my driver's
story, about the angel's dropping the stones upon Montenegro, and said:
"It must have been a poor sort of angel; for he didn't pick them up
again."
"Ah, well! He is trying to make up for it. Look here;" and he showed me
advices from New York for 1,500 kronen.
"If that angel keeps up the good work, we will have a krone for every
stone that he dropped on our soil. Don't you say anything against our
angel!"
XII
"THE HOLE FROM WHICH YE WERE DIGGED"
It was some sort of saint's day, one of the many; this day, just before
the harvest time, served at least one useful purpose. It brought
together the _latifondisti_, the landowners, and the _contadini_, the
labourers, who, after mass, bargained with one another for the harvest
wage.
There was a time when the _padrone_ had a dozen men at his heels begging
to procure them work; but now the tables are turned, and smartly dressed
men court these rough toilers of the Abruzzi, and are happy, when, over
a bottle of wine and a hand-grasp, the bargain is sealed.
In less than twenty years wages have increased from sixteen to sixty
cents a day, and the difference in the attitude of the two classes
towards each other is correspondingly great. The withdrawal from the
intense congestion in Italy of nearly 2,000,000 toilers in the last ten
years, accounts for the change in the economic condition of the common
field labourer of that country. No phase of human relations has been
left unaffected by this remarkable movement away from the home soil.
"Just as you wish, Signor," I heard a man say to one of the upper class.
"Three _lire_ and not a _centesimo_ less."
The landowner watched the labourer closely, and when he saw him
approached by another landowner, ran to him and sealed the bargain.
"Ah, Signor! Emigration has done this!" the labouring man said when I
entered into conversation with him. "There are not men enough left to do
the work, and if it weren't for the hard times in America, I would have
charged him two _carini_ (about sixteen cents) more; but there are some
men back from America who have not done so well, although they too will
not hire out for less than three _lire_. They say that in America they
have received three times as much."
The gentleman to whom I introduced myself, and who was suspicious that I
might be in his parts encouraging emigration, took a different view of
the situation.
"It is a curse, sir! Why, sir, you rob us of our men; of our strongest
men, and leave only the aged, the women and the children!
"I have fields still unploughed, although it is June, and the bringing
in of my crops will cost me three times as much as it did ten years
ago."
"Didn't he get a much better price for his produce?" I asked.
"Yes, indeed! Perhaps I am no worse off financially than before; but
worse than the higher wage is the changed attitude of the common people
towards the landowner. Signor, those who come back are worse than the
Socialists! The Socialists simply talk and argue; most of our common
people cannot understand what they mean. They have always known that God
made some rich and some poor, they were content with their cheese and
their olives; but these men who come back from America walk through the
streets as if they were our equals. They wear just such clothing as we
do; shoes without hobnails and starched shirts and collars.
"They no longer greet us respectfully as they used to, and the way they
spend money looks to these deluded _contadini_ as if they had _found_ it
in the streets of New York.
"Everybody in my town who has anything to sell, sells it or borrows from
his friends in America and goes there. Last year over 1,600 went out of
my town, which has less than 6,000 inhabitants. The saints alone know
what will become of us! And the worst of it is, Signor, that they lose
respect for us!"
Travelling from Naples towards Calabria, I noticed in the second-class
compartment a group of Italians returning from America for a visit to
their native hill town. Among all the people of this class that I had
seen, these were the most remarkable. They were better dressed than
others, spoke English fluently, were cleanly in their habits and
travelled second-class.
"Oh, yes! Italy is beautiful!" said one of them, who I afterwards
learned was a stationary engineer at New Brunswick, N. J. His finely
chiselled face showed his delight as he watched the landscape.
"But America is more beautiful on the insides. You ask why? I will tell
you.
"I was born in a small hill town of 3,000 inhabitants. My parents were
poor labourers and I was born in a hole in the wall. I will show you the
wall when we come to the town. No windows, no chimney, no nothing. Our
goats and pigs had another hole, smaller than ours; but the goats and
pigs were not ours, they belonged to the landlord and when the pigs were
killed we got half. We had just one meal of the meat and the rest had to
be sold to those who could afford to eat it; we couldn't. It was a great
day though when we had that taste of meat, and I don't think I have ever
tasted such good meat since. Of course we had meat only three or four
times a year.
"My father and mother both had to work in the fields. They left the hole
in the wall at four o'clock in the morning and came back to it at seven
in the evening. When I was a baby, my mother carried me along on her
back; later my sister carried me and I can't remember the time when one
of my sisters didn't carry a baby out into the field.
"I worked from the time I was seven; we all worked when there was work
to do. I never was hungry when the melons and the figs were ripe; but I
never remember having eaten as much bread as I wanted. I remember I
wanted to be older than I was, for the children got about an inch more
bread for every year, as they grew older.
"I went to school to the _padre_, and he taught me the _Pater Noster_
and the _Ave Maria_ and just enough writing to sign my name. When I was
fourteen years old, an uncle who lived in New York sent money to my
father and mother to come over. Never can I forget when that letter
came. I nearly went crazy. I ran around to every hole in the wall and
called out: 'We are going to America! We are going to America!'
"My father was crazy, too; for he gave the letter-man half a _lira_ for
bringing him such a letter and reading to him the good news. Everybody
in the town knew of our good fortune; for the letter-man told all those
to whom we could not speak, because they were above us. When we went to
Naples I thought I was going to heaven, and on the ship, in spite of
seasickness, I was happy; because for the first time in my life I had
enough bread to eat.
"I can't tell you how I felt when we came to New York; but at Ellis
Island they turned all my joy into weeping. Two of the younger children
had eye disease and they wanted to send all of us back. My uncle said he
would take care of us older children, so they let us in and sent father
and mother and the younger ones back. It was terribly sad and father and
mother cried; but although I too cried, I felt very happy because I
would not have to return to Italy. We promised them to come back and
here we are."
These then were the older children, three sons and one daughter, who had
been admitted to their heaven and were now coming home to the _padre_
and _madre_ who had lived in the hole in the wall.
"What do you think of emigration?"
The young woman answered: "Signor, it works like a miracle! I used to
pray many a time, when I went to sleep, that the good saints would work
a miracle and wake me in another world, where I could wear real
stockings and ribbons, and now my prayer is answered and the miracle has
happened."
Indeed it was a miracle. "Bessie," as the brothers called her, was
transformed and transfigured. She was more "stylish" than the
landowner's wife who travelled in the next compartment, and I feel sure
that her gown cost more than that of a certain American woman who shared
with me the pleasures of the journey Bessie was engaged to be married
to a countryman of hers, who is head gardener in a cemetery in one of
New York's suburbs.
"When we are married we will live in a cottage all our own, Signor, at
the edge of that beautiful cemetery; six rooms it has and a bath room!"
A miracle indeed! From the hole in the wall to a six-room cottage.
Of course this group is not typical. These people went to school in
America during their youth. The boys went to night school in New York
and the girl went to the public school; they had entered profitable
trades. Stone-cutting, engineering and dressmaking.
What was perfectly normal in their history was the effect that their
going away has had upon the town from which they came.
Does the father live in the hole in the wall? No indeed. They sent home
money enough to build him a house and buy about fifteen acres of land.
The children at home were all sent to school. Yes, times have changed.
All the children in that town are sent to school; for the immigrant
father writes to his wife: "Let the children learn how to read and
write. We who cannot, have to remain beasts of burden, while those who
can, rule over us."
My travelling companions grew greatly excited as the train drew near
their home. They collected their numerous packages and then looked
longingly at the town, perched upon a high hill and crowned by a
magnificent castle.
"Look, Signor, look! You see that wall, the old city wall? You see those
holes? I was born in one of them!" Tears stood in Bessie's eyes. No
doubt she thought of the six-room cottage and the miracle.
The station, in the shadow of the town, was much like other such
stations. There was the usual donkey cart. Pompous officials bustled
about and a few _carabinieri_ walked up and down, proud of their fuss
and feathers. The _padre_ and _madre_ were there, and a throng of
brothers and sisters and relatives, who greeted the travellers with
noisy and affectionate salutations.
Bessie's _madre_ held her at arm's length at first, as if to be sure
that this fine _Signorina_ was really the little girl she left behind in
New York twelve years ago. Ah, me! It was a love-hungry heart to which
Bessie was pressed. And the boys! What pride shone on the father's face!
Any father might be proud of them, and I was prouder than the father.
"See what America does for your men!" I cried to a portly gentleman who
stood beside us at the window, watching the interesting scene. He did
not answer; for the train puffed and screeched, and the cars lurched as
they were drawn around the curves. For a long time we could see the
donkey cart piled high with baggage, the happy people following it.
The train came closer and closer to the walls of that ancient town, and
on its southern side we saw again the holes in the wall, swarms of
little children, a gray, tired donkey and picturesque dirt and
confusion. At sight of those holes in the wall, I repeated my remark.
"See what America does for your men!"
"Ah!" replied the gentleman, "you see only one side of it; the bright
side. There is a dark side to emigration, as there is to an olive leaf.
We have given you nearly two million of our best men, to do your dirty
and dangerous work."
"Yes," I replied; "but we pay them a decent wage; more wages in one year
than you pay them in ten."
It was this remark, the sight of those holes in the wall, and the vision
of that six-room cottage in America, which set me to striking the
balance for Italy, the country most affected by the good and ill of
immigration.
Italy has given to America for shorter or longer periods nearly two and
one-half millions of men, for whose labour we have paid her a fair wage.
At least two million dollars annually to every one of the provinces from
which we have recruited this army of men.
While not all the money will remain in Italy, most of it has already
been invested in land. In 1906, there were at least 50,000 land sales
made, and much of the land will become doubly productive as a result of
the extreme care which will be given it by this landless class, which
has suddenly gained its foothold.
The rise in wages which is not far from sixty per cent. is a distinct
benefit to the whole country; for a living wage means adequate
consumption and increased production. While in some provinces there has
been a dearth of labour, Italy is rather remarkable in that there is no
danger of its being depopulated, and economically, the entire country is
the gainer through emigration.
I have heard many complaints, especially in Italy, that we make
Socialists and Anarchists out of their once docile peasantry. The facts
are these. Crime has decreased in all districts affected by emigration;
which however does not prove that the criminal classes have moved to
America. There are other reasons. First, improved economic conditions
have removed the causes for many crimes. Second, much crime was due to
the uncontrolled passions and undisciplined characters of the peasantry;
and the sojourn in America has given to many of them the power of
self-control.
That Calabria in Sicily reports a reduction of about forty per cent. in
crimes against the person, is certainly significant.
Again, the privileged classes in Italy and other European countries
naturally look askance at the spirit of independence which the men bring
back with them. Much as we may deplore with the aristocracy the fact
that the peasant has lost his fine manners, we can but believe that, on
the whole, the loss of docility and the gain in independence are a
splendid exchange and of untold benefit to all concerned.
Some day, Democracy may teach her children the art of polished manners;
let us hope that it may not be at the loss of the democratic spirit.
That the peasant looks his master straight in the face and does not
cringe; that he demands fair treatment, a comfortable yoke and no
pricking with the goad, are as much benefit to Italy and Austro-Hungary,
as they are cause for pride to those of us who believe that America has
a mission to fulfill in the world.
If the Italian has really lost his good manners, we have given him in
exchange a spirit of independence which, I admit, is sometimes a little
in need of pruning, and with it, a yearning for better things and the
possibility of its realization.
Public education in Italy has received an impetus directly traceable to
the returned immigrant, who saw its value. He was a beast of burden
because he knew nothing. The men who were educated had wealth, leisure
and all that was denied him and his children.
If ignorance is removed from the common people of Italy, especially from
those of the Southern provinces, she can well afford to pay double the
price she has paid, whatever that price may be.
It is also charged against the returned immigrant, that he spreads
sedition by bringing home strange religious ideas.
"Signor," said a priest to me in the Campagna, "a man came home who had
been in America a few years; an ignorant, stupid fellow, and when he
came, he invited his neighbours to his house. Not to treat them with
wine, as you might think; but to preach to them. Think of the impudence
of the man! A common man, uneducated and not a priest!
"And the people flocked to hear him! One day shortly after that, there
came a real American and he preached to them and they sang. I could hear
them singing, Signor, while I was saying mass. The tunes kept going
around on the tongues of the people and a few months after, they began
building a church. They call it the 'Methodisto' church.
"Tell me, what heresy do they teach? My flock is divided; the women are
crazy over this new doctrine and they gather the little children and
teach them to sing these heretical songs."
Undoubtedly, a new element of friction has been introduced into the
solidary, religious life of the nation; but it is equally true that, in
most of the towns of Italy, destructive ideas have long been at work
and have weaned many peasants, especially the men, from the Mother
Church, leaving them in an anarchical attitude towards Church and State.
The new religious ideals, which are largely the ideals of Protestantism
while also acting destructively, have, after all, large constructive
powers, and, on the whole, are of undoubted benefit. It is the
undisputed testimony of impartial observers, that the Sectarians come
home "cleaner" than others, that almost without exception they insist
upon temperance and chastity, and that they encourage a sane,
intellectual activity.
I have given concrete examples of this in other countries; but in Italy
these examples could be multiplied. I do not know of a single instance
where the introduction of vital religious ideals has not done more good
than harm.
The work of Rev. Luigi Lo Perfido, a Baptist minister, is somewhat
exceptional, yet in the main, typical. He has introduced into the town
of Matera a really constructive, liberal, religious movement.
This includes, in addition to the simple church services, a coöperative
system which has large economic consequences. He has made his church a
social and literary centre besides keeping it a spiritual force of
acknowledged value.
The Church in Italy may regard as a menace this spirit of the
Reformation, which it thought dead; but the Church itself cannot fail to
be stimulated by the introduction of the leaven. The Mother Church will,
perhaps, have to bestir herself to hold the people, by offering them
something better than _festas_ and processions.
Many observers complain that in Italian towns especially, emigration has
left too great a burden upon the women, and that their economic and
social condition is worse than before. This is partially true, but is
only temporary. The full truth is, that woman is being benefited most by
these great changes, although she now suffers most. Just as the
_contadino_ in Italy or the _nadelnik_ in Hungary has been freed from
the oppression of his masters, by emigration; so the woman in Italy will
be freed from the oppression which she is suffering from her "liege
lord" who, especially among the peasant classes affected by immigration,
is always at his worst in his relation to his wife.
If there is one complaint against the returned immigrant which is louder
than others, it is that the woman who has been in America is spoiled and
that she is a mischief maker among the other women, who are apt pupils.
While I do not anticipate that the peasant women of Southern Europe will
demand suffrage, they are beginning to demand a voice in the affairs of
the household; which has ever been their right, which has long been
denied them and which certainly does not indicate that they are spoiled.
Neither is there danger of their being spoiled; and it is more than
probable that the women of Italy as well as of other immigrant centres,
are as much benefited as the men, if not more than they.
After seeing the hole in the wall in which Bessie and her brothers were
born, and after looking at the matter from all sides, I can still say,
and with firmer conviction than before: "So far as my observation goes,
I feel certain that emigration has been of inestimable economic and
ethical value to the three great monarchies chiefly concerned, namely:
Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia. It has withdrawn inefficient labour
and has returned it capable of more and better work; it has lifted the
status of the peasantry to a degree which could not have been achieved
even by a revolution; it has stimulated the neglected masses, lifted
them to a higher standard of living and has implanted new and vital
ideals."
The hole in the wall in which Bessie and her brother were born brought
to my mind anew the prophetic injunction: "Look unto the rock whence ye
were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence ye were digged," and aroused
in me the spirit of humility; an attitude of mind essential for the
appreciation of all the problems and opportunities arising from the
presence in our country of these "lesser folk."
This attitude of mind ought not to be a difficult one for the average
American to attain; because most of his ancestors came out of such holes
in the wall--some better, some worse.
Even those of whom we no longer think as immigrants, but proudly call
our forefathers, who came long ago, came from good, plain, peasant
stock; not blue blooded, but of virile red blood.
For this we should be deeply grateful; although we are likely to forget
it, and also willing to forget it, I fear.
Recently I travelled with a friend and his wife. The gentleman, a
professional man of high standing, was going on a pilgrimage to his
ancestral village in Germany. The wife went there in the firm conviction
that the home of his parents must have been some ancient castle; for her
husband was a noble fellow indeed.
When we found the place where he was born, it was a cow-stable and
looked as if it had been none too good for that purpose, even in its
palmy days, and my friend discovered that his parents were peasants, so
poor that they were sent to America at the expense of the town.
Nevertheless, he and his wife are cultured Americans and their children
are graduates of our best colleges and universities.
Not long ago, in travelling from the East to the West, my neighbour in
the coach, a young man of evident good breeding, complained bitterly at
the presence of some Russian Jewish immigrants. He hated them all, he
said; and had no use for them.
I looked into his face, and beneath the ruddy skin and dark, wide open
eyes, saw that which only the initiated can readily detect--the racial
origin. "May I ask your name?" His name was McElwynne, and his parents
were English; but before I had done with him I knew that they had come
from Russia, that their name was Levyn and that he was a Russian Jew but
one generation removed from the steerage.
Quite unintentionally, I once almost broke the heart of a woman in
fashionable society. She pronounces her name with a French accent, and I
translated it into Slavic; in that language it means a common garden
tool, which proves her husband to be of peasant origin.
The sight of the hole in the wall in Italy, and of the wretched huts in
Hungary and Poland, has quickened my sympathies with the people who come
out of them. Even so our fathers and mothers went forth, driven by
hunger and dire need, drawn by the dream of better things and sustained
by a simple and devout faith.
After all, we are brothers. Born out of the womb of poverty, nourished
by coarse fare, taught in the hard school of labour and saved from
wretchedness by the same good providence.
More and more we shall grow into one another's likeness, and that of
God, as all have more bread, better air, cleaner homes, good books and
an unobstructed view into heaven.
For this, "Praise ye the Lord, kings and all people; princes and all
judges of the earth!"
Praise Him ye Irish and Scotch!
Praise Him ye English and Welsh!
Praise Him ye Germans and French!
Praise Him ye Slavs and ye Latins!
Praise Him ye Gentiles and Jews!
"Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord! Praise ye the Lord!"
PART II
With the Incoming Tide
XIII
PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE
The 1,200 steerage passengers who sailed for the United States early in
November, 1908, on the steamship _America_, of the Hamburg-American
Line, were the advance guard of the vast armies of men which were
waiting for the election of Mr. Taft to the presidency.
That to them, was synonymous with the return of good times; but before
those good times had a chance to prove themselves identical with those
which took sudden flight over a year ago, the steamers of all lines were
assured their full number of steerage passengers.
When the first shipload of them sailed into New York harbour, its humble
passengers were hailed as the harbingers of the prosperity which was
being anxiously awaited by rich and poor; by native and foreign born; by
the citizens of New York and Budapest and by the people of Chicago and
Spalato.
We, in the United States, have alternated between fear because so many
immigrants came, and regret because so many went away; but the recent
influx brought joy to all, because the coming again of so many,
indicated the return of good times.
For our good or ill, for what is better than mere good times, and for
worse than financial depression or economic problems, these strangers of
all races and nations come and go, helping to make our history and shape
our destiny.
From the beginning, our history has in a large degree been determined by
the migratory movements of larger or smaller groups from the Old World,
and unless we have idealized these movements overmuch, those groups
which came, unconscious of the gold and the iron slumbering in our
hills--which came for "conscience' sake"--those groups have affected our
history most fundamentally if not most permanently.
Pilgrims, Puritans, Huguenots, Quakers and German Pietists certainly
made history. They sailed the treacherous seas and marched into the
pathless wilderness, driven by something higher than the mere necessity
to sustain life.
Subsequently came other Germans, the Irish, Scotch and Scandinavians.
They came primarily because of economic distress in the home-land; yet
even among those were many groups which came because they were dreamers
of dreams, and sought "a city whose builder and maker is God."
In one of our Western states are two large communities, one from Holland
and one from Germany; both are late comers to this Western world. One
of them has built itself into a rather typical Western town and the
other is the one successful example of a religious community in this
country. Both these groups left prosperous homes in the Old World to
seek a place where they might worship God according to the dictates of
their conscience; and all this happened in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, at the very zenith of our material development.
Large and influential groups of these seekers after God may be found
throughout the length and breadth of our country; although they may now
come out of the heart of Russia, like the Molicani in Los Angeles,
California, they come moved by the same impulses which drew the Pilgrims
to Plymouth and the Germans to Pennsylvania, and they exhibit the same
characteristics.
In these days most people believe that when the last Irishman has
arrived from Dublin, the Old World will be drained of her best people,
and we look upon a certain boundary line in Europe as the division
between good people and bad; yet from beyond that line come pilgrim
bands in much larger numbers than the casual observer knows, and they
are bent upon the same holy errand as that which brought those who came
generations ago. In fact the Reformation with its religious and
political consequences is making itself felt at this late day in these
migratory movements. Large groups driven to the plains of the Volga or
the Danube are now coming to the United States; with narrow doctrines,
it is true, but with deep convictions, and the churches of the
Reformation feel this current in the measure in which they have kept
themselves spiritually alert. Yet one must admit that the vast majority
of those who come is driven by no higher motive than the economic
pressure. Yet it is not always poverty which drives them from their
village homes to our cities or from their quiet fields to our noisy
shops.
They are no poorer to-day than they were fifty years ago when no one
thought of moving even a league from the village in which he was born.
They are simply obeying an impulse which is extending to the very edges
of civilization; an impulse created by discontent. Everywhere men are
beginning to believe that God meant them to enjoy the good things of
life _now_, and that all men, not merely a privileged class, should be
able to enjoy them.
Nothing ever quite so rudely shattered the idea of the stability of
wealth as the discovery of America and the subsequent migrations there
of different groups from different portions of Europe.
Wealth had been in a measure entailed, the possession of a class; and
poverty was meekly accepted as the divine apportionment to the mass of
men. When it was rumoured that gold lay hidden in the mountains across
the sea, that no key was needed to gain access to its hiding-place, and
that it would belong to any one who dared, the myth was quickly
dissolved. Poor men came and got their share of gold--not so often by
finding it as by toiling for it.
Further and further the truth travelled; slowly, as is the way of truth;
until to-day, scarcely anywhere is the prevailing social order or
economic status accepted as fixed. The greater the number of men
returning from America, even with very moderate wealth, the more the
discontent spreads, and men seek the place where this change may soonest
be effected.
They will continue to come until the economic opportunities at home are
appreciably nearer those they find in this strange land. Although at
present there is no European country or province from which there has
not been some emigration, there are people who have only begun to seek
this adjustment; therefore, the force of the tide towards America is
destined to increase rather than decrease, and an annual influx of
2,000,000, more, rather than less, may be expected during the next
decade.
No matter from where the groups come, they will present an economic
problem to those who, in a measure at least, have risen to a higher
standard of living. Each group will fear that the younger and often
cruder body may lessen its chances of maintaining that standard. The
Germans, the Irish and the Norse people were not received with open arms
by those who preceded them, even those of related race or nationality.
This was especially true during the years when war, famine and
persecution brought them in large numbers.
Now, in turn, all these look askance at the Jew, the Slav and the
Italian; while they, like the rest, are ready to close the doors to the
vast hordes about to move onward, and, as they believe, upward. It is
also interesting to note, that among these late comers, there are
decided ideas as to who are desirable immigrants, and who are not.
The Slav, if he is a Pole, would exclude his cousin, the Slovak, and
both are united in thinking that the Ruthenian is a rather inferior
being; while the Ruthenian would debar the Jews, Servians and Croatians
from the economic benefits of the land of his adoption.
Until now there has been room for all, and they have not presented a
serious economic menace, except as they have intensified the general
problem of labour. Each group, driven from the lower and coarser tasks,
has risen from mine to shop, from shop to store, and from the store into
every avenue of business and professional life.
Thus far all have been crowded up and not many have been crowded out. No
considerable groups of native Americans are bewailing the fact that
they cannot find work in the mines; nor would large numbers desire to go
back to them from their safer toiling places.
The Irish are not mourning because they are not working on sections, nor
would they be willing to leave their beats and office chairs from which
they are ruling, not only those of us who came after them, but a fair
share of those who came before them. They do not care to go back to the
track, the pickax and the shovel.
Without the Slav, the Italian and the Magyar, that which we call our
industrial development would have been impossible. This development does
not lessen the economic problem, it intensifies it; but it cannot be
proved that no economic problem would exist if, instead of Slav and
Latin, the Teutonic races were dominant in this movement. In that case I
believe the problem would be more difficult of solution.
Let me again frankly admit that I do not regard most immigrant groups of
the present type as a serious menace to the other groups, or to the
whole economic life, provided they are needed to do the work for which
they seem best fitted. At present this is still a matter of proper
distribution and presents no such serious difficulty as is commonly
supposed; for the immigrant will go wherever he is wanted and a fair
wage is assured him. Nor is he quite so eager to herd in cities as we
imagine, and no community need be without an adequate supply of
labourers, if they are needed for hard, crude labour. There is no work
so hard or so dangerous that the immigrant will not attempt it.
Like their forerunners in the migratory movement of European races, the
present immigrants respond quickly to the American higher standards of
living, and in many cases much more quickly than some of the older
groups responded.
When we speak of the horrors of the East Side of New York, the crowded
Ghetto and Mulberry Street with its Italian filth, we forget the days
when the Irish possessed the land, "squatting" wherever they could, and
living in wretched huts; when the American used to sing:
"The pig was in the parlour, and that was Irish too."
The pig and the goat have gone, and instead, the Irish have pianos and
phonographs in their parlours; but in one generation, many Slavs and
Italians, under less favourable conditions, have achieved the same
results, minus the pig and goat period.
To-day, the merchants in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Connelsville and
Pittsburg regard the Slav as a great "spender"; and if the Italian is
not now like his predecessors, he soon will become so imbued by the
American spirit, that, like us, he will live up to his income and beyond
it.
That phase of the problem so much complained of, which relates to the
immigrants' sending the bulk of their earnings to Europe, would not be
half so serious if we provided a safe banking system; preferably, Postal
Savings Banks. Both the Austrian and Italian governments thus safeguard
every penny which is sent abroad, and one cannot blame the toiler who
prefers to trust his money to a government in whose financial soundness
he has absolute confidence, rather than place it in our own savings
institutions, in which we ourselves have but little confidence.
The economic problem as presented by the effect of immigration upon the
labour market is made less serious by the fact that large numbers of
those who come, go back and forth, according to the demand for the
commodity which they supply.
During our last financial crisis, the sudden withdrawal from competition
of half a million toilers, certainly rendered conditions less difficult
than they would have been had we drawn for our supply upon those sources
in Northern and Central Europe, which have always sent us their surplus
population for permanent settlement. Those aspects of the present
immigrant population, which are usually pointed out as its defects, have
in a large measure helped to make the economic problem less acute;
although they have aggravated some phases of it. Foremost among these
is the ethnic problem.
Possibly because of the bitterness of the race question in the South,
the American people have become very sensitive to ethnic differences.
All those primitive instincts which were at work in the childhood of the
race have risen to the surface and threaten to become permanent factors
in our national character.
A little more or less pigment in the skin, the shape of a nose or the
slant of the eyes, produce in the average American that most primitive
of antagonisms--race prejudice.
Being a primitive instinct, it defies reason, the commandments of
religion and the dictates of humanity. In fact, it often becomes
irrational, irreligious and inhuman.
During the recent agitation of the Japanese question on the Coast, I
discovered that no matter how far removed the ordinary American may be
from the seat of the difficulty, the very agitation of the question acts
contagiously upon the people of the East as well as of the West. As a
result, their feelings towards the Japanese have unconsciously changed
for the worse, so that the question has assumed in their minds the
qualities and proportions of the Negro problem.
To justify its existence, this instinct, if such it is, overemphasizes
ethnic differences and minimizes the superior qualities of the race or
group involved. It always applies the categoric judgment when the
judgment is adverse, and admits grudgingly that in each group or race
there are certain individuals who possess good qualities.
In visiting nearly every city of the United States where there are
groups of Italians, I have everywhere heard it said by those who had
dealings with them: "We have no bad Italians, ours are good, the bad
ones are elsewhere." In Trenton, N. J., you are told that the bad
Italians are in Patterson; but when you are there, nearly every one
denies the fact and consigns all the bad Italians to New York.
The truth is, that wherever men have had a chance to know the individual
Italian, they have discovered that there are good Italians even as there
are good Jews and good Slavs, and that there are good and bad in every
race.
Naturally, when men apply the warped categoric judgment to another race,
particularly when that race is in political or economic competition with
them, they are likely to magnify the evil in the character of the race,
and rarely even admit the good. That this categoric judgment is seldom
just, that it leads to antagonisms which actualize themselves in race
riots and wars, is certainly very evident.
I have watched the development of this prejudice against the Japanese,
even as I am most anxiously watching it grow against certain European
groups which are ethnically more or less differentiated from the native
population, and I am not over confident that we shall solve the ethnic
problem without much struggle and stress and strain. Indeed, the ethnic
problem can be solved only if we have patience, a measure of sympathy
and the sense of justice.
There is a subtle force at work, which, to a degree at least, is
settling this matter for us--a force which, if we allow it full play,
will complete the task whose result will be the miracle of the age.
I call it a miracle, advisedly; for the things which seemed fixed,
unchangeable, deeply graven in the nature of certain European races, the
products of long ages, vanish in a generation.
Race characteristics which were regarded as biological are found to be
sociological; on the outside of the race, if we might so express it, and
not on the inside.
The children of the Neapolitans and the Sicilians lose somewhat of their
swarthiness; the features lose their sharpness, and as a rule the
children grow over the heads of their parents. Indeed, the last named
process takes place among natives and aliens alike.
The ethnic differences of even the most strongly marked European races
will ultimately disappear; that is, if we have patience and sympathy,
and, above all, if we mete out that justice which gives every man a
chance, regardless of his nationality or race.
As a nation we do not possess in an abundant degree these qualities;
therefore the ethnic problem is one which may yet postpone its solution
until that time when indeed there shall be "Peace on Earth and Good Will
to Men."
Thus far I have touched upon two problems presented by the return of the
immigrant tide: the economic and the ethnic.
Another problem presented by this influx of aliens is in that rather
indefinable realm called culture.
The question is: Will these people be able to appreciate the cultural
ideals of America, and make them their own?
It would be an insult to my readers to try to make clear to them that
the people who come to us are not barbarians or semi-barbarians;
although as a rule they are uncultured and not yet in harmony with many
of our ideals. I would not even attempt to mention this, were it not for
the fact that it is the commonly accepted idea, that we are dealing with
the offscouring of Europe. Let me illustrate. Not very long ago, I heard
a home missionary secretary of a certain denomination say before an
audience of intelligent, Christian people, that "We are landing annually
a million paupers and criminals"; and I venture to say that nearly every
one who heard that statement believed it. Let us see who these people
are who come to us.
Slavs, Latins and other Aryan groups, such as Lithuanians, Albanians,
and Greeks; of whom the first two have fairly earned the right to be
called the oldest inhabitants of the continent of Europe. Next in order
are Finns and Magyars, from among the Ugru-Altaic races, Jews and some
smaller Semitic groups. The bulk is made up of Slavs, Latins and Semitic
peoples.
Need I question whether the Latin has in him the qualities which will
enable him to appreciate our culture? The Italian who built Florence,
whose sons built St. Peter's, painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
and carved out of Carrara marble the "Pieta" and the statue of Moses?
Need I mention Giotto, the builder, Raphael, the painter, a Dante, a
Petrarch, a Savonarola--a hundred masters of the chisel and the brush,
of rhythmic rhyme and stately prose, all reared in that Garden of
Europe, Italy?
Will the Jew learn to appreciate that culture, the best of which was
created by his sires? For the glory of our American culture lies in the
quality of its manhood and womanhood and that at its best is patterned
after men and women whose names would debar them from certain clubs and
hotels to-day. Moses, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and in all
reverence I mention Jesus and Mary, John, Paul and Peter. Strange to
say, it is sometimes necessary to call the attention of intelligent
people to the fact that these men and women were not Methodists or
Presbyterians or even Episcopalians; and that neither their sires nor
their sons came over in the _Mayflower_.
Perhaps we need to realize that as Americans we have neither invented
nor discovered education, liberty or religion. What we have accomplished
is, that we have made gifts to the many, of some of those blessings
which in the immigrants' country are the possession only of the few; and
that is no small achievement.
The problem, the real problem, is: how to feed these people on truly
vital knowledge, how to make common to all, the beautiful, the
harmonious, the ethical; how to bring to all, the knowledge of that
religion which indeed makes free from tribal pride and racial hate and
leads men into the freedom of the sons of God.
Perhaps the greatest problem still to be solved is, how to interpret to
these people the one supreme gift of all these gifts which most of them
never possessed--the right of citizenship.
Herein lies our real peril; not because the immigrant cannot be made to
understand how to exercise this right; but because here we are least
efficient, and here we, the earlier comers and their children, have most
signally failed.
The Scotch-Irish of Pittsburg are not a conspicuous example of good
citizenship for the Italians; the Germans of Reading and Lancaster have
no overplus of civic righteousness to give the Slavs; the Quakers of
Philadelphia have not been moved by the Spirit to teach the Jews how to
govern a city righteously; the Yankees of Connecticut and Rhode Island
have not ruled their states in such a manner that the crude Lithuanian
or the Greek could in all cases follow their example; nor are the Irish
of New York in a position to throw stones at the other races.
I do not know of a single case where the newer groups have failed to
respond to sane, vigorous leadership in the struggle for civic
righteousness; while in every large city there are conspicuous examples
of many a battle won, because the immigrants have aided the cause.
In Scranton, Pa., in the fight for a clean city, the mayor's private
secretary, a Russian Jew, did valiant service; while Pittsburg's
"cleaning up" has been accomplished because a vigorous attorney of the
same race was one of the captains in a campaign which may have vast
consequences for the entire state.
It ought to be a matter of no little pride to the Jews of Pittsburg,
that among its non-corruptible councilmen there was at least one of
their race.
Prof. Graham Taylor of Chicago, whose worth and work that city does not
fully appreciate, has found the Poles of his ward ready to share in the
struggle for civic betterment. One of the first "clean" councilmen of
the city came from that ward and was a member of the Slavic race.
The problem of citizenship is not a problem created by the immigrant,
and his presence makes it more difficult of solution, only because we
have not provided him with safe leaders and have not ourselves been very
good examples. Indeed the primary corrupting influence in every city
with which I am acquainted is either of native stock or belongs to the
first or second generation of those immigrants whose coming does not
disturb us and whose presence we regard as a blessing. These are either
German or Irish, and largely of the latter nationality.
That phase of the struggle which is directed against the saloon, the
newcomer does not understand, and as yet no one has taken pains to
enlighten him. We are astonished when we find him opposing our efforts
to deprive him of his liquor; but to the Slav, at least, whiskey means
life and strength. He would regard being deprived of meat as more
reasonable than having his _vodka_ or _palenka_ taken from him.
The immigrant needs leaders in whom he can have absolute confidence;
leaders who possess the genius of democracy and the spirit of
brotherhood; who will have patience with his slow ways.
Those of us who are not born to lead ought to realize that a good
example is very contagious, and that the love of righteousness and
justice is not so foreign to these strangers as some of us imagine.
It is in the hope of stimulating both leadership and good example that I
have written the following chapters. In that hope I have pointed out how
contagiously our example acts upon these groups and how the processes of
assimilation are retarded by injustice and prejudice.
I have given special attention to the religious life of these newer
groups whose interpretation I have attempted, because not only does
religion play a large part in their lives; but because I believe that in
the field of religion lie the largest possibilities for that kind of
assimilation which can make of all these "tribes and tongues and
nations" "fellow citizens with the saints"; and of all the "strangers
and sojourners," members of the "household of God."
XIV
THE SLAV IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM
In the three groups which form the bulk of our immigrant population, the
Slav is now the strongest and the most interesting factor, and is
destined to be for some time to come.
In spite of his being from the least densely populated regions, he is
numerically the greatest and will long maintain his supremacy. There are
more than 100,000,000 Slavs, and the territory they occupy is vast,
covering half the European continent and reaching far into Asia.
These people are scattered in villages, but rarely concentrated in
cities; nevertheless, social and political conditions among all of them
are now such as to force this most immovable of European races into the
great outgoing tide.
The majority of Slavic people is of peasant type, and scarcely anywhere
has it developed a middle class strong enough to form a bridge upon
which to cross the age-long chasm between it and the upper class. This
means that poverty and contempt have been accepted as the reward for
hard labour, and as the divinely appointed lot of the peasant, who in
but few Slavic countries has escaped serfdom, a condition of
semi-slavery from which he emerged with insufficient land, or none, with
many limitations as to individual ownership and with practically no
limitations as to his share of the burden of government support.
The masses of the peoples of the Slavic countries have never been above
economic want, and have been but slowly awakened to the more expensive
demands of our civilization.
To the peasant, bread and cabbage to eat, a straw thatched _isba_ to
shelter his family, and an occasional pull at the _vodka_ bottle, meant
comfort; while to have feather beds, a crowing cock in the barn-yard and
a pig killing once a year, was the realization of his wildest dreams.
Fully two-thirds of these more than 100,000,000 people do not know what
it means to have enough bread to eat, and with the exception of Hungary,
many of the countries in which they live do not produce enough
foodstuffs to allow every man the ordinary military rations.
Nevertheless, they are forced to export a fair share of their crops, in
order to bring sufficient money into the country for the support of the
government.
To people living under such economic conditions, emigrating to America
will, for some years at least, be a going from Egypt to the Promised
Land; although manna and meat have to be supplied without supernatural
intervention and at the constant peril of life and limb.
As the Slav has not yet developed a compact middle class, this has had
to be supplied by foreigners. Germans, Jews, Tartars, Armenians and
Greeks are his merchants and mechanics, his bankers and manufacturers.
This condition has fixed the social status of the peasant, placed him
under exceptionally burdensome laws and marked him an inferior.
His picturesque clothing became his prison garb, and rarely did he have
opportunity to exchange it for the commonplace clothing of our
civilization.
To be a peasant means to be addressed by a personal pronoun which is a
mark of inferiority; it means to be bound by customs which are as
irksome as an "iron shirt"; it means to be the butt of the ridicule of
stage fools, who, after all, only mimic the fools in real life.
Military service offered the only escape from this cast, and bravery in
battle the only avenue to distinction.
Into some regions the industrial life came with its rude call to
freedom, with its trumpet notes of revolution, and the half awakened
Slav struck; then went to sleep again, murmuring something like a curse,
before he closed his eyes.
This social disability of the Slavic peasant is being partially overcome
by immigration; for the immigrant who has tasted a little of even our
crude freedom with its mixed blessings, who wears our sombre clothing,
whose feet are shod with our shoes--he it is of whom it might again be
said, poetically and prophetically: "How beautiful are the feet of him
that bringeth glad tidings of good things."
These glad tidings will, for a long time, bring us these millions, in
the hope that they too may earn the right to escape their bondage with
its attendant limitations and contumely.
Economically, always at the edge of want and in the shadow of
starvation, and socially always at a disadvantage, the Slavic peasant is
also living under galling political conditions which he is only now
beginning to feel in all their severity.
With but few exceptions, the Slav is an oppressed man; oppressed by
alien rulers, who, by force, are trying to wipe out of his consciousness
his national memories, and steal from his lips his mother tongue.
Where it is not the German or the Magyar who puts him under the yoke, it
is some close Slav relative who is practicing on him the Golden Rule in
its perverted form. When these conditions do not exist, the Slav bears
the yoke of his own making, in the form of Autocracy.
It is the distinction of the Slavs that they are the only Europeans who,
although not unanimously, believe that Autocracy is the form
[Illustration: TWO TYPES OF POLES]
of government best suited to their national character.
This is certainly true of many Russians, who see in the Czar a divinely
appointed autocrat; while many other Slavs of different nationalities
dream of the day when they shall bear this same yoke. The Russians also
rule, and most severely, their close kinsmen, the Poles, and are not
noticeably liberal to the Malo Russ, the Little Russians of the South.
Every cruel, political expedient has been used by Russia to subjugate or
assimilate these people, who are flesh of her flesh and bone of her
bone.
One might imagine that the Poles would have learned enough in the school
of political adversity to treat their own kinsmen, at least, as they
would wish to be treated; but the trials the Ruthenians have endured at
their hands are equalled only by what they themselves have endured at
the hands of the Russians.
That the Poles suffer from the Germans, the Slovaks from the Magyars,
the Slovenes and Servians from the Austrians, is only additional
evidence that everywhere the Slavic peasant suffers politically, and
that there is sufficient cause for the insecurity of his foothold. He
realizes this the more, in the measure in which he feels the breath of
welcoming freedom from across the seas, which lures him to our
turbulent training school in citizenship, and no doubt will continue to
lure him.
The economic, social and political conditions among the Slavs are such
as will for some time in the future make their coming to America in
large numbers, a certainty, and it is not out of the question that they
will be the determining factor in our civilization. The Slav fits
admirably into the place usually assigned the late comers among the
immigrants: the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Of rugged physique
and docile temper, he is regarded a valuable workman, performing the
hardest tasks uncomplainingly, facing attendant dangers courageously,
and enduring hardships and sufferings stolidly and without a murmur.
Economically, he is never so much of a problem as the immigrant who
comes to make his living by his wits; for that is a sphere likely to be
crowded by the earlier, or what we might call the more advanced groups.
The Slav is docile and patient and need not be regarded as a serious
economic menace by those who think that our workmen should demand a
decent wage and maintain a fair standard of living. He is not temperate
in his habits of either eating or drinking, his tastes in regard to
clothing are crude, but not necessarily inexpensive and he squanders too
much money for "that which satisfieth not." He spends over thirty per
cent. more for drink than the native workman, pays more, according to
his wage, for rent, and falls behind only in that mysterious column
which the social observer calls "miscellaneous." In the Slavic groups
which have been here longest and which contain households, the wife has
lifted this mysterious column to a normal figure; for "Mother Vanity"
has many daughters among the Slavic women.
The Slavic standard of cleanliness suffers by comparison with that of
the older groups; although they are widely different in this respect and
it is not safe to generalize on that point.
In judging the Slav we must take into consideration the housing
conditions in America as he finds them, the fact that the men among the
Slavs never do woman's work, that many of them come without their wives
and that the woman in her native environment has very little time for
the finer household duties. She is her husband's partner in all his
heavy labour; but must do all her household work unaided.
Many of the Slavic groups will be slow to understand and appreciate the
higher ideals of our civilization, but our civilization is not so
foreign to their genius as we are apt to think. Wherever they have had
the slightest opportunity, they have made valuable contribution to it.
We must not forget that the Slav gave the world a Copernicus before we
gave it a Newton; that he gave it a John Huss before the Germans gave
it a Luther; that Comenius, one of the greatest pedagogues, lived and
laboured before Froebel and Pestalozzi; and that Turgenieff, Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Sienkiewicz stand fairly well beside our makers
of literature.
I am not blind to some of the defects in the character of the Slavic
peoples, in fact I know them so well that I know their source and I
realize that they are not rooted in the race, but are the results of
_tyranny_. These faults which seem so deeply fixed in the lives of the
people can and will be wiped out; although the task may not be an easy
one.
There is in the Slav a certain passivity of temper, a lack in sustained
effort and enthusiasms, an unwillingness to take the consequences of
telling the truth, a failure to confide in one another and in those who
would do them good, a rather gross attitude towards sexual morality and
an undeniable tendency towards Anarchy and intemperance.
They have but little collective wisdom, even as they have no genius for
leadership, scant courtesy towards women, and other human weaknesses to
which the whole human race is heir. To balance these failings, however,
they have a deeply religious nature, a willingness to suffer hardship, a
genius for self-expression in all forms of art, are usually honest in
their business dealings and hospitable to strangers.
The danger is, that, in his new environment, the idealistic Slav will
grow materialistic, that his phlegmatic temper will not take seriously
the burdens of self-government, that in an individualistic atmosphere
where "help yourself" is the watchword, latent tendencies towards
Anarchy may develop, and that in our social organization which demands
both the power of leadership and that of cohesion, he will be a brittle
element, incapable of either.
Yet I do not fear that Slavic social or religious ideals or even racial
characteristics will become dominant among us, even if the Slavs should
constitute the bulk of our immigrant population. My reasons are: First:
Because these ideals and characteristics are embodied in a peasant
population which has little or no influence over its second generation,
for it has found a higher social level. To this second generation,
neither the speech nor the customs of its parents is attractive.
Second: Because the Slav is environed by city life and no matter how
compact his neighbourhood may be, elements which make up the urban
spirit penetrate into the most densely populated alley, make themselves
felt, and become dominant.
Third: Because in his native environment the Slav has taken on the
ideals of his neighbours more often than he has imposed his upon
others.
In Asia, he has been influenced by his Mongol neighbours, but has
himself not left any visible traces.
In Europe, the numerically weak Finn has resisted the force of the
Autocratic State and the Orthodox Church; but has left the impress of
his genius upon his Slavic neighbours.
After centuries of close contact with Slavic government, the Germans in
the Baltic provinces of Russia are still more German than Russian.
The Czechs of Bohemia, the most virile of all the Slavic peoples, in
spite of their stubborn struggle, have not metamorphosed their Germanic
fellow citizens into Czechs; although they cannot easily deny the strong
influence of their Teutonic neighbours upon themselves.
A mere handful of Magyars, almost at the centre of the sphere of Slavic
influence, have imposed upon millions of Slavs their language and their
ideals.
Whatever the causes for these conditions may be, and there are good
causes, the truth is, that the Slav has nowhere become a dominant factor
in the environment in which he has been placed; and we need neither hope
nor fear that his ideals or his characteristics will become ours for
good or ill.
Again it is true that in America this Slavic peasant population is
awakened to its racial and historic heritage, and that feeling may be so
artificially fostered by patriotism and religious organizations as to
hinder a normal process of assimilation.
The Slav, by virtue of being among the most numerous of our new
citizens, has a right to demand that the rest of us should know him; for
by knowing him, we shall learn to respect him, appreciate the good
qualities of his race and help him to overcome tendencies which hinder
his full development.
We must give the Slav a full chance to know us, the best of us and the
best in us--he usually knows the worst.
He must have our best interpreted to him in rational terms and ways, and
not have it forced upon him by law or by a custom to which he yields but
which he cannot understand.
I have described the Slav's quality as brittle; perhaps stubborn would
be better. You can lead him to the water and can also compel him to
drink; but he will stop drinking when you are not looking, and "kick"
besides.
On the other hand, once he understands and endorses an ideal, he will be
loyal to it; stubbornly loyal.
Inasmuch as I believe that America's best possessions are those ideals
which spring from its religious convictions, ideals inherited from its
Judaic and Christian ancestry, I also believe that its effort should be
to interpret them to the Slav in practical terms of fellowship and
service.
How far from these ideals or how near to them the Slav is, I have
attempted to show in the next chapter; and to make the task of
interpretation easier, I have put the more important Slavic groups with
which we have to deal, in their own historic setting.
This will, I trust, stimulate in the further study of these people who
are worth knowing for what they have suffered, for what they have done
and for what they are.
XV
THE SLAV IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY
When the sword of Rome, the ideals of Athens and the faith of Judea
strove for the mastery of the world, the Slavs were still unknown to
history. Upon the middle European plain, along the Don, the Dnieper and
the Vistula they lived a semi-nomadic life, at war only with bear, elk
and boar, and at peace with the dominant races in the west of Europe
which scarcely knew of their existence.
Very early in the Christian era, the transition from nomadic to
agricultural life took place, and they became so identified with the
soil that some of the agricultural terms they used have been embodied in
other European languages.
The facts that the Slavs inhabited the eastern portions of Europe to its
very edge, that Christian civilization was imposed upon them by
Byzantine and Roman influences, when both were struggling for the
mastery of the Christian world, and that the territory they inhabited
became their battle-ground--had great and lasting effect, not only upon
their political history but upon their religious life and their national
character.
The Slavs then are a late product of Christian civilization; an
unfinished and inharmonious product which is at its worst, where later
Greek and Roman influences touched it, most turbulent where modern
Western ideas have suddenly affected it, and at its best and rarest
where the Slav's own talents and resources have had a chance for
rational development and adjustment.
That which complicates the problem presented to us by the Slav is the
fact that in spite of his occupying practically contiguous territory,
the close family bond was early broken by conquering armies, by rival
missionary groups, by invading aliens who came to pillage, barter and
trade, and by the influx of his neighbours, who varied all the way from
Tartar and Turk to German and Magyar; from Finn and Armenian to Greek
and Albanian.
When we speak of Slavs to-day we refer to Aryan people, whatever that
may mean beyond the fact that they are Europeans, presenting no great
ethnic variations; although there is no doubt that Mongol and Finnish
blood has found its way into the veins of the Eastern Slavs. We also
mean that they speak a closely related language, the Slavic; but which
has become so differentiated in time that there are now literatures in
Russian, Polish, Czechish, Servian and Bulgarian; each a distinct
language, differing in alphabet, grammar, accent or sentence
construction.
Besides these, there are other dialects, vital enough and varied enough
to have created their own literature, and zealously guarded as their
mother tongue by the people who speak them.
These linguistic differences have aided in complicating the religious
and political problems among them. Thus, the Russians and the Poles have
been made hereditary enemies, largely, because one received its
Christian doctrines from Rome and the other from Constantinople;
Ruthenians and Poles in Austria have been pitted against each other in
an age-long struggle, by a difference in liturgies; Slovaks and Czechs,
almost twin brothers, are little better than strangers to one another,
because of a few hooks in the alphabet and a few variations in
pronunciation.
The whole Southern Slavic group remains politically ineffective because
of the dissimilarities of the Cyrilian and Latin alphabets and all that
their difference is made to imply.
Even when transplanted to America, these contentions are magnified by
the churches and governments concerned, which thus are effective in the
continued separation of related groups.
If the Slavs may be called one race, they certainly present a
kaleidoscopic conglomerate out of which emerge three groups: the
Western, Eastern and Southern Slavs.
Besides their common racial bond, each group is related by language,
economic environment, determined by climatic and political conditions,
and above all, by religion, which is a stronger bond than even ties of
racial kinship.
The entire Slavic world is living under the dominion of religion more or
less clearly interpreted and understood. This manifests itself in
conversation with the people. "God help you on your way!" "Go with God."
"Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ!" are common greetings as one journeys
along Slavic highways and byways.
The names of the Deity and of the Saviour or the Virgin are never
uttered without lifting the hat, accompanied by the words: "Slava i cast
nyim budi!" Honour and praise to them!
The highways among the Western Slavs, who are largely Roman Catholic,
are lined by crosses, chapels and shrines; and no matter how wretched
the village, its church is well appointed and its peasants are not quite
happy at the end of the year, unless its monotony was broken by a
pilgrimage to some shrine where the Virgin waits, ready to bestow her
blessing of good health or other rich favours supposed to be in her
special keeping.
Feast days and fast days follow one another in quick succession and no
season of the year or event in life is left unhallowed by religious
observances.
All this is equally true of the Eastern and Southern Slavs who, with but
few exceptions, belong to the Greek Orthodox church, and are cast in a
religious mold as fixed as the form of the Byzantine _icon_, the symbol
of that church.
To the Russians, the largest body among the Eastern Slavs, religion is
an atmosphere in which they "live and move and have their being." Among
them also, church feasts and fasts regulate the days, while either the
pleasure or the pain they bring is willingly accepted.
Sacrifices of candles and oil are freely offered and no pilgrimage is
too wearisome to be undertaken. Visiting the tombs of saints and the
dwelling places of hermits is a national mania, and religious
ceremonies, which in their origin and meaning are wholly Pagan, take
place in hut and palace alike; for no class of Russian society is quite
free from gross superstitions. The peasant coachman, who drives his
miserable beast over the cobblestone pavement, crosses himself before
every chapel and _icon_; while his passenger, be he a general, a
university professor or one of the common people, will do the same, with
perhaps only a little less unction.
Yet, in spite of the fact that religious forms dominate the life of the
masses of the Slavs, there are no people in Europe who less understand
the real value of religion, whose conduct towards each other is so
little affected by it or to whom it is so entirely a mere belief in the
mysterious forces of Heaven and Hell which can be appeased by prayers,
formulas, sacrifices and pilgrimages. Religion with them has seemingly
nothing to do with sobriety, chastity, conquering the will, or the
cultivation of the inner virtues.
The blame for this lies largely with the clergy, which, whether it is in
Russia, Bulgaria or the countries inhabited by the different Servian
nationalities, stimulates the superstition of the people and does but
little to enlighten or ennoble them.
The priests nowhere occupy or deserve the place which they hold among
the Western Slavs, and where the Roman Catholic minority has any
fighting ground among the Southern Slavs, as in Servia,--there the
Franciscans and Trappists tower above the Greek clergy as benefactors of
their people and often as true saints and martyrs.
My assertion that the Slav is by nature truly religious, and that the
clergy is in a great measure to blame for his hopelessly low standards,
is proved by the remarkable phenomenon of the sects, which especially in
Russia flourish, in spite of persecution. They grew up from within; some
of them, supposedly before the Reformation, and still they are being
formed and developed.
These sects range all the way from the most fanatical, whose members
seek salvation in voluntary death or in some revolting form of
mortification of the flesh, to large and influential bodies, kinsmen to
our Quakers, Baptists and Methodists.
It is this hunger for religion which is the most hopeful characteristic
of the Slavs, and one which ought to make contact with them less
difficult than we usually imagine it to be.
The problem is, how to purge these movements from fanaticism when
transferred to America; although in our soberer, freer and more
practical atmosphere the dangerous elements are apt to be spontaneously
corrected.
Protestantism, as a manifestation of historic Christianity, antedates
among them the German Reformation and was contemporaneous with the
earliest movements in England. History clearly shows that the Protestant
spirit found kinship among the Slavs and that it is still alive.
Evidences of this are the sect of the Bogumils early in the fourteenth
century, which has left its traces among the Southern Slavs as far as
Bosnia; the Hussite movement so vitally effective in preparing the way
for Martin Luther and still a force in the national life of Bohemia--and
the various sects among the Russians.
This Protestant spirit in its conventional form, as found in Bohemia, in
Poland to some extent and among the Slovaks of Hungary, is unfortunately
no more a factor than the Mother Church in the shaping of character, in
inducing right social relations, or in determining the future of the
Slavic race.
There are, however, various Protestant forces at work among these
people; forces which emphasize spiritual and ethical ideals; such as the
missions of the American Board, in Bohemia; the devoted and enthusiastic
members of the "Gemeinschaft" in Kattowitz in Silesia, strategically
situated where three great empires meet; the Baptist missions in Russia,
and above all, the returned immigrant, who comes home, often
enthusiastically but sanely, practically and devotedly religious, and
with whom rests largely the religious and political future of at least
two Slavic nationalities, the Slovaks and the Ruthenians, the latest to
be awakened to the economic possibilities in America.
The Slovaks for nearly a thousand years have retained their national
consciousness, in spite of the fact that long ago they were conquered by
the Magyars, who have used every possible means to wean them from their
language, the one strong link binding them to their historic past.
Patiently they have endured a national martyrdom; although the world at
large knows nothing of their sufferings.
Whenever they have tried to speak, prison doors have enforced silence.
In the struggle between race and race, the Magyars, who themselves were
persecuted for freedom's sake, have, in their treatment of the Slovaks,
violated every principle of political liberty.
In a little village called Hluboka, in the midst of their well tilled
acres, lives a group of Slovaks whose Lutheran pastor, John Hurban, was
a man who helped to keep alive this national spirit, for which he
endured imprisonment and even faced the gallows. In 1892 the people
erected a modest monument over his grave, and at its unveiling they were
driven from the cemetery at the muzzle of the gun.
The son of the dead pastor wrote an article in the public press
protesting against this, and he was sent to prison for twelve months. An
editor, Ambrosius Pietor, was incarcerated for eighteen months, for
writing two articles complaining of the treatment his people received.
When he returned home at the expiration of his term, his admirers met
him at the railroad station and some young girls presented him with
bouquets of flowers.
Twenty-one persons who took part in this reception were sent to prison
for an average of a month each, and the three young girls, who betrayed
their native country by handing this man bouquets of flowers, had to pay
fines, aggregating 400 kronen.
In 1906, 245 Slovaks were sent to prison, and from 1906 to the present
time the number is not far from 500. I have already cited the nature of
the offenses for which they are punished.
I have mentioned these facts, not because I wish to throw discredit upon
the Magyars, for government and people are usually two different
things; but because I wish to throw light upon these Slovaks who come to
us to do our most menial work and whose worth is obscured by our not
knowing them. Their clannishness, the tenacity with which they cling to
their native speech, and their attitude towards our Christian and
national institutions, find some explanation in the miseries they have
endured for the sake of preserving some kind of national or racial
entity.
I consider these Slovaks among the most unspoiled of all the Slavic
peoples; low in the scale of culture, it is true, but of such innate
goodness and possessing so many virtues, as to make them most desirable
immigrants and splendid material upon which to graft the best of our
Christian civilization.
Like all Western Slavs they are largely Roman Catholic, but with enough
of the Protestant element mixed with it to have given evangelical faith
a grappling place.
This broader vision with its ethical element has been transferred from
America to the Slovaks in Hungary and is now manifesting itself in a
company of people, which, though small, is so thoroughly in earnest and
ethical as to prove that they can be brought into harmony with the most
vital religious ideals.
Ruthenians, or Ukranians, as they call themselves, who belong to the
Eastern Slavic group,
[Illustration: RUTHENIANS
The most backward and oppressed of the Slavic people, whose destiny is
worked out in America.]
are a most unhappy people; degraded by adverse economic and religious
conditions, worse if possible than those of the most debased Russians
whose closest kinsmen they are. In Austria a majority belongs to the
Greek Catholic church, which is a union of the Greek Orthodox and the
Roman Catholic churches, maintaining distinct Byzantine dogmas and
acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope.
There are about 34,000,000 of these people, numerically more important
than the Poles, by whom a portion is governed or ill governed and
persecuted. Neither have they any chance for full development in Russia
where the largest number lives; nor in Hungary, where they make their
home on the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. They are now struggling
for the maintenance of their national consciousness and are bearing all
the unfortunate consequences.
In the United States their protest has taken form politically, in a
National Ukranian Society, and religiously, in a Ruthenian Free Church,
and both deserve sympathetic aid from those who believe in political and
religious freedom.
The great task of religion in its ministry to the Slav, and that no
matter what its ancient form or symbol, will be to make clear to him the
difference between God and Cæsar; for religion and nationality, Heaven
and the throne, are confused in his mind.
It must also teach him that besides its sacramental value it has service
value, whose obligations rest upon priest and people alike.
Religion must wean him from his ancient enemies, intemperance and
superstition, and when it has done this, it has rendered a service which
may again make of the Slavs a homogeneous race; great, vital, virile and
well prepared to play a leading part in the future history of Europe as
well as America, where they are now, numerically at least, the most
important element in the great immigrant tide.
XVI
FROM EPHRATA TO WHISKEY HILL
That portion of our history, which began with the inflow of Germans from
the Palatinate, seems to most of us a closed chapter; yet in the very
heart of the Keystone State, where more than 200 years ago the German
pietist began to build its cities, since grown to greatness, the German
is still a foreigner.
Indeed, he is almost as complete a foreigner as the Slav who lives in
the mining patches along the Wyoming arid Susquehanna Rivers. Germanic
speech, habits and types survive, and it was in a crowded trolley car in
Reading, Pa., just after I had finished a wearisome investigation among
the Slavs, that a woman of generously Teutonic proportions said to me:
"Setz dich a mahl zu mir her."
Let me add that although I had never seen the lady before, I obeyed the
summons. First, because there was no other seat vacant, and, second,
because I have been long enough in America to obey implicitly when a
lady commands.
"Du acts wie ein stranger," the good woman continued, taking my hand;
and then, discovering that I had a right to act like a stranger, she
apologized profusely. She had mistaken me for her family physician. In
spite of her evident embarrassment, we began a conversation, and my
ears, accustomed as they now are to our rather monotonous and uneuphonic
English, refreshed themselves by listening to this new speech--Pennsylvania
Dutch. It required thinking in two languages, and that in their most
archaic forms.
Four generations had passed since my neighbour's ancestors came to this
country; yet her English, whenever she attempted it, smacked strongly of
the Fatherland, and in an unguarded moment, when my sentences seemed to
her rather involved, she said, "Du talkst a bissel zu fast."
The trolley took us through the manufacturing centre of Reading and out
into the fruitful fields of Lancaster County, and the further I
travelled in that state the more I realized the difference between the
old and the new Pennsylvania, even in the names called into my ears by
the prosaic conductor. Philadelphia does not now suggest Bible times so
much as it might; but there are Bethlehem, Nazareth, Emmaus, and
Ephrata, each name suggesting at once a sacred atmosphere. Then for the
new Pennsylvania are the names of Johnstown, Coalton, Scranton, and
Steelton, besides those yet unplaced on the map--names like Hunkeytown,
Guinea Hill, Dago Roost, and Whiskey Hill, squatted close to the mines,
flanked by culm heaps and huge breakers, and cut through and through by
ravines and dirt-clogged rivers. All these towns are destined to
disappear long before the last lumps of coal dug there, are burned.
The trolley stopped at Ephrata, and my neighbour, who had been in
Reading, "bargains zu kaufe im grosse schtore," left the car; but not
without admonishing me to be sure to see the cloister of the German
Baptist Brothers, which, she said, "is a grosse sight." I needed no
admonition, for I was there on a pilgrimage. I had come, to stand face
to face with a great past, to visit the old haunts of these German
mystics, to lose myself in the all-pervading peace of Ephrata, after
having been in the thick of the great industrial war, whose presence was
attested even here by the cloud of smoke on the western horizon. This
cloud of smoke, although changing into a pillar of fire by night, does
not seem to be the guide out of captivity. I suppose one easily reads
something into the atmosphere of a place; but I am sure that, even
without the pilgrim spirit which brought me there, I should have
recognized Ephrata as one of the places in which dreamers have built air
castles; and these are castles which have foundations. The archæologist
does not see them in the dust; but the sociologist, if he has a
sensitive spirit, feels them, especially if he has come from a week's
study of Whiskey Hill.
One of the men who has written of Ephrata before me says: "There is
nothing peculiar about the village itself, or its people." He evidently
had no "inner sense," and, moreover, he had never been at Whiskey Hill.
Not only is the air of Ephrata "salubrious and the outlook delightful,"
the street is full of gabled houses one close upon the other. Some of
them are commonplace indeed; but many of them are quaint and clean, with
deep-set windows full of flower-pots, the green foliage shining through
latticed panes, in rich contrast to the white snow almost up to the
window-sills. And the people one sees--"commonplace"? People who for
nearly two hundred years have clung tenaciously to a strange garb, in
the midst of a "perverse and crooked generation," bent upon changing the
cut of its coats with every passing season? Women who wear brown bonnets
and look as modest as thrushes, whom one sees in single file following
the men; women who have resisted the allurements of pokes and toques and
picture hats for two hundred years--such women commonplace? Such women
are as remarkable as they are rare, and such there are in Ephrata.
As I watched them they were going to the modest meeting-house at the
edge of the village. I did not follow them, for my way led straight down
the main street which ends in the turnpike, over which a toll-gate still
hangs. The gatekeeper sits in a little hut among his cronies, smoking
the native weed and talking politics--and he who is acquainted with the
quality of either ought to know that they are strangely alike.
"The cloisters are across the meadow," the toll-keeper informed me. And,
pointing to one of his companions, a man of uncertain age and a rather
doubtful degree of cleanliness, he said: "And he lives in one of them."
"I am not a member," the man volunteered, apologetically. "My wife is."
This alone proved him a modern and commonplace. I left him disgustedly,
and, stepping over the stile, walked through the snow-covered meadow and
along the shores of the Cocalico towards a group of rather ill-shaped,
weather-beaten buildings which suggested a deserted farm more than a
cloister. The momentary disappointment vanishes, however, as soon as one
has a clear view of the peaked-roof buildings in which no outer beauty
is visible, but which, with their low doors, narrow cells, and roped
stairway, recall to him who knows, the "Chronicon Ephratense," the
groping of this Brotherhood after the blessed life here below, seeking
communion with God in self-denial, in good works and pious songs. These
Brothers fell into all the errors of Christendom and practiced many of
its virtues in a single generation. Conrad Beisel, a German mystic, came
here to live as an anchorite. His pious life drew others to him, and
they progressed to monasticism.
When women found them, they all became celibates. They were close to
every heresy which threatened the early Church, and were not far from
worshipping Conrad Beisel as a reincarnation of Christ; while in the
mystic Sophia they came close to the adoration of the Virgin. They
practiced communism successfully for over half a century, and branded
property as sin long before Proudhon declared it to be theft. They
printed Bibles, wrote ecstatic hymns, developed to a remarkable degree
the art of illuminating letters, and organized a Sunday-school in which
they used some of the so-called modern methods, such as promotion cards,
long before the thought came into the mind of Robert Raikes, the founder
of the Sunday-school of to-day. They were chaste, frugal, and
non-resistant. One of them, Peter Miller, the successor of Conrad
Beisel, went to George Washington to plead for the remittance of the
death penalty of a man, Michael Wildman, accused of treason. The General
told Peter Miller that the severest penalty must be dealt out at a time
like that.
"If it were not so, I would gladly release your friend."
"Friend!" replied Miller; "he is the only enemy I have."
This, it is said, made such an impression on General Washington that the
pardon was granted.
I lingered in the "Saal," the place of worship. Simple and small it is,
with plain pine pews, the beamed ceiling hanging far into the room. The
walls are covered by charts on which, in exquisite ornamental lettering,
Scripture verses and some of the mystic poetry of the Brothers are
written. There are also allegorical pictures, naively drawn by the pen,
suggesting the thought that in time a new school of religious art might
have been developed here.
Scarcely half a dozen worshippers, I was told by the cronies at the
toll-gate, gather here on Saturday; for the sect is that of the Seventh
Day Dunkards, or German Baptists, and it cannot be very long before this
sanctuary will be empty and forsaken and its ruin complete.
I braved the snow-banks and waded through an unmarked path towards the
cemetery where they shall all soon lie. I wandered among the graves,
among those who long ago went to their rest and their reward. Here among
others are the Sisters Iphigenia and Anastasia and the Brothers Daniel
and Gabriel, the headstones of their graves quite covered by the snow.
In the centre of the cemetery a stone sarcophagus rises above the snow.
It seems to have withstood the ravaging tooth of time, for it stands
squarely upon the ground. I brushed aside as best I could the snow which
covered the tablet, and read: "Here rests an outgrowth of the love of
God, a solitary brother, afterwards a leader, ruler, teacher of the
solitary and the congregation of Christ in and around Ephrata. Born in
Eberbach, in the Palatinate. Called by his worldly name, Conrad Beisel;
but according to his spiritual name, 'Friedsam,' the peaceful one."
The snow and the frost clung closely. I could not read it all, but I saw
plainly the beautiful German letters cut deep into the stone.
"Friedsam"--it was this word which took me back to Whiskey Hill.
"Friedsam." No one could be called that on Whiskey Hill. Weather-beaten
wooden buildings there are, scaffolded structures, shaken by the
vibration of coal-crushing machinery within. From their third or fourth
stories down, young boys sit before troughs, along which the coal rushes
and rumbles and tumbles. Nine hours a day, in an atmosphere black as
night from coal dust, sitting in a cramped and unnatural position, the
breaker-boys pick slate from the falling coal by the light of smoky oil
lamps directly under their nostrils. Nine hours of this, and many of
these boys, mere children, although sworn to be the legal age, which is
fourteen, walk homeward like old men. They look so weary, so old, so
wizened! They surely are not "Friedsam."
An old man climbs down the breaker. He, too, is now a breaker "boy."
Only about fifty-six years of age, unfit for the harder work in the
mine, he picks slate from the larger lumps. He clings to a bit of broken
fence as soon as the fresh air strikes him and coughs so violently that
his paroxysm shakes the fence. The boys stand about, jeering; but when a
clot of blood comes from the old man's mouth, and another followed by a
stream, the boys take to their heels.
"_Prach_, dust, got into my lungs," the Slovak miner says. "It can't
last much longer." Looking after the boys, and then pointing to himself,
he adds, "The beginning and the end of the breaker-boy."
I shall never forget the pain written on that man's face as he told me
that he came to this country, a young Slovak boy from a village by the
river Waag, strong and full of health. He is giving his life-blood drop
by drop, drop by drop, for our enrichment. He is unable to walk home; so
I lead him. Home! This is his home. A gray, weather-beaten hut, one of
thirty, standing on a slant of the hillside, surrounded by culm piles,
black and forbidding. There is a street, deeply sunk in mire; for there
is no sewerage, and a sickening green scum has gathered in front of
every house. I say there is no sewerage--there is not even a decent
ditch which might carry the foul stuff away.
The hut has three stories, the lowest one built into the hillside, with
windows only to the front; the rest of the rooms are damp and cold, not
even fit for the storing of vegetables. In one of these holes lives the
old, consumptive breaker-boy. Surely this suggests nothing "Friedsam."
There are thousands and tens of thousands such "homes" in Pennsylvania,
all the way from Pittsburg to Whiskey Hill. Each one of them brings rich
revenue to somebody, and all of them reap a rich harvest of death. Six,
eight, and ten dollars' rent a month is paid by these miners for a place
in which they often die by inches.
The battle against filth is not everywhere zealously prosecuted; but I
challenge any American woman to do better than some of these Slovak
women on Whiskey Hill. Let me take you into one such home--and I came
upon it more often than you may think. The room is freshly papered, the
work done by the miner's wife, and not ill done. The floor is
scrupulously clean; gorgeous pictures of the saints hang on the wall;
there is a sewing-machine, and a woman busy at her task of making shirts
for her miner husband.
There are two rooms, occupied by a family of
[Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME IN HUNGARY
A peaceful, little village surrounded by fields of poppies and maize.]
[Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME ON WHISKEY HILL
Flanked by culm piles, breakers and mines.]
five, and four boarders. I know the home of this woman in Hungary, and
the very village from which she comes. I know the clean, straw-thatched
cottage, the broad, dusty street, and the waving poppy-field back of the
house; and I ask, "How are you getting along on Whiskey Hill?" This is
the woman's reply: "Chvala Bohu dobre." Thank God, very well. I have
never seen a more beautiful and grateful smile pass over a face, and
have never heard a sentence which more fully suggested "Friedsam"; but
suddenly her face grows dark; she hears the noise of hurrying horses and
the beating of wheels against the rocky street. "The ambulance! O Virgin
Mother, protect me!" she cries; for the ambulance stops at her door, and
they bring in the mangled body of her husband.
He went out a few hours ago and she was "Naomi"--now he is brought home,
and she is "Marah." Bitter, very bitter.
What happens next on Whiskey Hill? Do people grow excited? Do the
neighbours come rushing in? Do the newspapers in the town at the foot of
Whiskey Hill take notice how this "Hunkey" came to his death? No,
indeed. Nothing happens. The woman laments alone, even as another Marah
laments alone in a similar row on another ridge. There are ten women
anything but "Friedsam"; for on a neighbouring hill their husbands were
slain together, by the fall of one huge rock or the same powder blast.
"And nothing happens?" Yes, something happens. The coroner's jury is
summoned, and brings in the verdict; the same verdict always, with
slight variations, rendered ever since the great companies absorbed the
anthracite industry. This is it:
"Martin Horvat, aged forty-two, came to his death by a fall of rock in
Mine No. 2 on Whiskey Hill, January 30, 1908. The jury finds that the
company should have provided the deceased a safe place to work in. It
was not the duty of the deceased to pass on the safety of the roof. The
deceased is not to blame." (What a comfort!) "We further find that the
place in which the deceased worked should have been properly timbered"
(which it was not when the accident occurred), "but we do not find that
the company was to blame."
Who was to blame? The deceased was not, the company was not. I have
it--the rock was to blame. Somebody in Wilkes-Barre said, in answer to
my query; "These Hungarians are so ignorant." I see now--ignorance was
to blame.
Every day there are funerals on Whiskey Hill, and after the funeral a
feast, and after the feast a glorious spree. Whiskey Hill has earned its
name, although it might be called Beer Hill just as appropriately. The
saloons not only outnumber the churches; they outnumber the stores,
schools, churches, undertakers' shops, and culm hills combined, and a
man might make a living by picking up the empty beer barrels that lie in
the ravines. There are enough empty bottles lying in the runs, to clog
the flow of the creek in the spring, when the current becomes strong
enough to make its way through the ooze and slime.
Ignorance and beer are to blame--and avarice, especially avarice. For
the first two the miner is to blame, but only in part. This ignorance is
an inheritance, often a condition arising from the fact that he is in a
strange country, to whose language he is deaf and dumb. The drinking,
too, is an inheritance, and often also a condition arising from the
circumstances under which he must live and work.
Granting, however, that he is ignorant and intemperate, up here on
Whiskey Hill and on hundreds of other hills no attempt is being made by
any one to dispel this ignorance. Neither his masters nor his priests
are doing it. His priests, perhaps, are more content with his ignorance
than his masters, for to the master he might be worth more if he knew
more. The priest is sure of the opposite result as far as he is
concerned. No one on Whiskey Hill tries to curb intemperance by teaching
the "Hunkey" the hurt of it to his bank account, to his body, to his
chances of coming alive out of the mine. His priest usually drinks
freely, and many a saloon license in Pennsylvania bears the signature of
the priest as one of the petitioners.
Even those people who are eager to make laws to curb or prohibit the
sale of liquor, ignore entirely the education of the "Hunkey," although
he is now, and more and more will be, a great factor in the political
and social life of the state.
Avarice is to my mind the basic fault in all the history of accidents in
the mines of Pennsylvania. It is an avarice which thinks human life
cheaper than timber, and considers it easier to pay funeral expenses
than to support schools and pay teachers. It corrupts politicians to the
degree that there is seemingly nothing more to corrupt; and if half the
charges are true that are made openly by the newspapers in the coal
regions, against the mine inspectors, they certainly are hopelessly
debased.
Of the one thousand people slain annually in the anthracite coal region,
two-thirds are chargeable to one of three causes: ignorance,
intemperance, and avarice. Inasmuch as these causes could in a large
degree be removed by the people of Pennsylvania, it follows that the
people are to blame.
Twenty-three thousand lives have been sacrificed in the coal-mining
industry in the United States in about ten years! Read it again!
Twenty-three thousand people had to give up their lives for the light
and heat and speed which we enjoyed in the last ten years. Twenty-three
thousand men! Almost I envy the Brothers Daniel and Gabriel and the
Sisters Iphigenia and Anastasia the time in which they lived, when the
waters of the Cocalico turned their wheels, when they printed books and
illumined letters, when they could do their share in pushing this world
forward without sacrificing the lives of an army of men to what we call
progress.
That time will never return, in spite of Rousseau and Ruskin and
Tolstoy; but we must have a time, and have it soon, when we shall be
able to do all that we are doing without such slaughter. Nothing is
worth doing and nothing is worth having unless, like Conrad Beisel, we
have a "new name in the Lord." For myself, if I lived in Pennsylvania,
it should not be "Friedsam" but "Streitsam"--not the peaceful one, but
the fighter.
XVII
FROM THE LOVCZIN TO GUINEA HILL
According to ordinary railway standards the car was only half full, for
each passenger was the fortunate possessor of an entire seat.
Reluctantly enough, one or the other of my fellow travellers gave to
some newcomer the space which allowed him some freedom for the movements
of his body; but when a dozen foreigners entered the car at a wayside
station, every man and woman moved defiantly to the outer edge of the
seat, determined that not one of the intruders should share it.
Ordinarily the conductor sees to it that such monopoly of privilege is
properly rebuked; but this time he apologized for the presence of the
immigrants by saying that the smoking-car was "jam full of Dagos
already."
Meekly enough, the men stood in the aisle, glad of the privilege of
standing in the car, which carried them from the scene of their labours
to the distant city where the signora and the bambini awaited them. I
made room for one of the men, and for a time employed all my senses to
discover if possible the reason for their receiving such treatment. I
smelled neither garlic nor whiskey, although I was soon engaged in
conversation with my neighbour and thus had a good chance to detect
either.
He wore blue jeans overalls, which, while not stylish garments, are
certainly honest clothing. There was no crease down the middle, but they
had creases all over. His hands were not unclean; although the soil of
honest labour was upon them.
In no way was he different from the American working man of the same
class, except that he did not chew tobacco and therefore did not indulge
in the practice which usually accompanies that accomplishment.
In order to ascertain what chances there were for English conversation,
I addressed him in that language, and his answers in broken English were
certainly more entertaining than the abrupt "yes" or "no" which one
often receives from the native fellow traveller, to whom it is usually a
matter of indifference whether or not the time hangs heavily on one's
hands.
At the next station the smoking-car was relieved of its surplus
passengers, and my neighbour with all his countrymen was driven into it
with rough gestures. I am very proud of the courage I displayed by
turning in my seat and addressing the man who sat behind me.
"Won't you please tell me," I said, hesitatingly, "why you wouldn't
share your seat with one of those men?" I fully expected him to say,
"It's none of your business," but his stern face relaxed for a moment as
he replied, with a rising inflection, "Dagos," and then looked as stern
as before.
I was not satisfied by that answer and said so. This opened the way for
an argument, and conversation was soon in full swing.
"What right have those Dagos to come to this country, anyway?" he
retorted, when I pleaded that those men had paid their fares and had the
same right that he had, to a seat. I soon discovered that neither logic
nor ethics was his strong point; so I thought I would try him on
history.
"Do you know," I asked, "who was the first 'Dago' that came to this
country?" For a moment he put his thinking apparatus to work; then he
said, and I am quoting his words exactly:
"I suppose it was somebody by the name of Macaroni, who sold bananas
when he landed in New York, and talked an outlandish gibberish."
"No," I replied, "his name was Christopher Columbus, and if it had not
been for that 'Dago' you would still be undiscovered."
I had great difficulty in making my fellow traveller believe that there
are cities in Italy more beautiful than Pittsburg; but when I told him
that a "Dago" built the largest church in the world, his materialistic
sense was touched and he began to listen respectfully to what I said.
"The same 'Dago' who built that church carved statuary so beautiful that
whenever any man wishes to free the 'imprisoned splendour of the stone'
(I did not quote Michael Angelo to him, however), he has to go to see
what that 'Dago' has done.
"And that same man," I continued, "painted a ceiling which is one of the
great art wonders of the world. His name is Michael Angelo."
"I never heard of him."
"I know of another 'Dago'" I continued, emphasizing "Dago," "who painted
a picture for which even _you_ might be willing to pay $500."
"I'd like to see it!"
When I mentioned Raphael and the Sistine Madonna, he did have some vague
idea of what I was trying to convey to him; for these were fairly
familiar names.
Then he fell upon me savagely. "But you don't mean to say that these
'Dagos' that come over here are anything like Michael Angelo or
Raphael!" To which I replied: "No, they are not; but neither are you
anything like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln." Then I returned to
the perusal of my newspaper.
That man was an average American of the middle class, a representative
of the bulk of our population, and he, in common with many of his
countrymen, is criminally ignorant of the people who will soon have his
weal and woe in their hands.
The Italian, the Greek, and the Syrian are usually called by the classic
names "Dago," "Roundhead," or "Guinea," and the Slavs, be they Poles,
Servians, Slovaks, or Montenegrins, are called "Hunyaks," "Hunkies," and
"Slabs"; and I once heard the owner of a great industrial establishment
call them "Bohunks." It was not an ignorant or malicious friend of mine
who said of a Jew, a man of scholarly attainment and a common
acquaintance, "He is a pretty decent Sheeny."
I have no quarrel with the fact that the average American is ignorant of
the historic place which these people hold among the nations, and of the
great age-long struggle through which some of them have passed and are
still passing, that they may preserve their identity as a people. I am
thoroughly incensed, however, that nearly every one of the names applied
to them is an expression of contempt, an offhand judgment of
inferiority. After all, it is not even that which makes me take up the
cudgel for them, because they must and will prove for themselves that
they are perfectly human like the rest of us, and that in all essential
things they will grow like us as soon as they have the same privileges
which we have had, who came after the first "Dago" had discovered the
way to this land of opportunity.
What really _does_ burden me and make me cry out is the consequences
which result from such ignorance as I have cited, and because of which I
was on that train travelling to Guinea Hill.
Guinea Hill differs from Whiskey Hill in that it bears many other
fantastic names and in that there are fewer saloons. The beer-kegs do
not lie about in such unpicturesque confusion, and the Slavs who live
there come from the shores of the Adriatic and the bleak mountains of
Montenegro. The huts in which they live on Guinea Hill are even worse
than those of the earlier comers from the north of the Slavic world. I
am told that they were built some thirty years ago, and no sacrilegious
hand has touched them since, to paint them or to change their original
primitive, dry-goods-box architecture. They seem to have sunk into the
refuse of the mines, and the sociological investigators, who know the
housing conditions in Pennsylvania, declare them to be "the worst in the
state," which phrase would be eloquent from meaning were it not so
common as to lose its force.
Living in these wretched huts among stunted trees, the leaves of which
are shrivelled and blackened by coal dust, I found young men with whom
I had walked among the olive groves near Spalato. These young men had
rowed me across the Boche de Cattero, easily the most magnificent bay in
Southern Europe, and had shared with me the luscious figs which they
carried in their shirt bosoms. I saw many a man whom I first knew
beneath the deep shadow of the Lovozin, the historic mountain of
Montenegro, whence the spirits of departed heroes still call to fight
against Christianity's hereditary foe--the Turk.
When last I saw these youths they wore garments of red and white cloth,
richly embroidered, with their belts full of costly weapons of ancient
pattern, and their fierce mustachios stretching out defiantly like long,
double-pointed daggers. Here on Guinea Hill they all wear the sober garb
of miners, their mustachios are shorn of their fierceness, their weapons
have disappeared, their shooting is done in the darkness of the mine,
and they rarely shed any blood but their own.
I went to Guinea Hill because I am partly responsible for the presence
there of some of these Southern Slavs. Many years ago, when I visited
their mountain fastness, numbers of them were at the verge of
starvation. The crops on their scant fields had failed; fighting the
Turk had grown to be a fruitless and profitless occupation; Russia,
their ally and the godmother of their little principality, who in the
past sent thither what surplus of foodstuffs she possessed, was herself
living on borrowed money and charity, so that nothing remained for these
warriors except to starve or seek for work.
I suggested to Prince Nicolas that he permit them to go to the "land of
the free and the home of the brave." Not one of them, however, was then
willing to leave his rocky cradle home for the unknown fabled land so
far away, and they remained on their bleak mountains to take
half-rations or none, waiting for the realization of Russia's Asiatic
dream in which lay wrapped their own future. The Japanese war and the
subsequent Russian revolution were like the eagles' stirring the nest,
and the young eagles began to flutter in the exaltation of their first
flight, as they sought the shores of our far-away country. Four or five
thousand of these braves exchanged the hilt of the sword and the butt of
the gun for the shovel and the pickax, and the shadow of the towering
Lovczin for the shadeless Pennsylvania hills. There I found them digging
coal as bravely as they had fought the Turk, but known to their American
masters only as "Hunkies" or "Guineas"--no one discovering in their
open, honest faces a superior race--every one scenting in them
drunkards, brawlers, and incendiaries.
The usual results of such ignorance followed, in that they have been
treated with an injustice which makes them quite unconscious of the fact
that they have found the land of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." I
have verified nearly every complaint which they have made to me, for I
know how easy it is for sensitive men to exaggerate their wrongs; but I
found that they knew only about half of what they suffered, the other
half being mercifully hidden from them by their ignorance of the
language and the customs of our country.
After pay-days and feast-days the magistrates of the towns around seek
them to arrest them, and the fine they must pay is always twice, three
times, and in some cases ten times as great as that imposed upon the
American offenders. After trials which make a Russian military court
seem fairly decent, they are railroaded into jails and workhouses, and I
now soberly confess that as a stranger I would rather fall into the
hands of the police of Moscow or St. Petersburg than into those of the
protectors of the law in most of our industrial centres in Pennsylvania
and out of it.
The citizens of Pennsylvania may be comforted by knowing that Indiana,
Ohio, and Illinois, in their lower courts, are as unjust to the stranger
as their own state. In one town in Ohio there is, or was, a mayor who is
reputed to have made $9,000 a year out of the fines imposed upon
foreigners for petty offenses, usually for drunkenness or brawling.
This ingenious official arrested alien drunkards under the statute of
the state which allowed him to fine them as high as thirty dollars,
while the native was arrested under the statute of the town and fined
three dollars for his spree.
The Indianapolis police arrested a Slovak woman for the heinous crime of
picking up coal on the tracks. On the coldest day of the year she was
taken from her home and children and driven to the workhouse, in spite
of the fact that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The terrible
results of this inhuman treatment were, of course, what might be
expected. Such facts have led the citizens to organize an Immigrant
Protection League, which makes it its business to see that the immigrant
is not exploited by the courts.
On Guinea Hill every "Roundhead," as he is commonly called, despises the
court for its undignified procedures and its perspicuous dishonesty. The
judges' contempt for the immigrant, as well as that of other executive
officers, rankles and hurts beyond the telling, causing people who might
become stanch, loyal, and heroic citizens, to hate and despise our
institutions. If in time of turmoil and economic distress they become
lawless, as I firmly believe they will, we shall reap only what we have
sown. In our present hysteria about Anarchy it is well to remember that
it feeds on injustice, that it cannot grow--in sane minds at least--if a
nation deals out justice impartially, and that it would die out
completely if as a people we would live somewhere within hailing
distance of Mount Sinai.
I do not ask any sentimental consideration in our law courts for the
Slavic or the Italian offender. Deal with him firmly; punish him if
punish we must; but let the man who steals a coal mine be not dealt with
more leniently than the woman who picks up coal on the track. Let the
Jewish thief suffer, if he has stolen the railway's old iron; but let
him who steals a whole railway also suffer in proportion to the
magnitude of his crime.
I have asked for the aliens, and shall not cease asking until I am
heard: First, that we learn to know them. The people of Montenegro,
Poland, Hungary, and Italy are worth the knowing. If struggle for
liberty means anything in the character of a nation, then these people
have character; for their fields are drenched in martyrs' blood. Where
in Hungary the poppy grows reddest, or in Italy the figs are most
luscious, there the common people have shed their blood heroically.
Besides that knowledge, which, if it did no more for us, would at least
enlarge our mental horizon, I ask for common, fundamental justice; not
only for the sake of the alien but for our own sake. I ask and shall
continue to ask for justice--justice, which is the least if not the most
that we are capable of giving them. At present I do not ask, for I
cannot expect it, that enlightened justice which is love, the divinest
human gift. I ask for just plain, common, every-day justice.
"As ye would that" your own offenders should be done by, so do ye even
unto the alien. This is as far from the Golden Rule as Guinea Hill is
from the Lovczin; but it is the most we may expect, although not the
most for which we ought to ask.
Not a hundred miles away from Guinea Hill, at the Hazleton Young Men's
Christian Association, I want to show you what enlightened justice can
do for the "Roundhead." I came down from the Hill disheartened and sad,
and, stepping into the office of that rather remarkable Young Men's
Christian Association building, I saw a man, with dust-cloth and broom,
walking about with the peculiarly graceful stride of the mountaineer.
"That's Gabriel--not the archangel; but an angel, anyway," Mr. Hill, the
secretary, told me. "Go from garret to cellar and you will find no dust
or disorder. The small boy, that bane of the Young Men's Christian
Association, fears him and loves him in turn. I don't see how we could
get along without Gabriel."
"Kiss my cheek, Gabriel, and wish me well." And Gabriel kissed my cheek
and wished me well, just as he used to in his Montenegrin home, when
kinsman met kinsman upon the war-path as they fought their ancient
enemy, the Turk. Now, no weapons bulged from Gabriel's belt, his
clothing was faultlessly American, his once furious mustachios had
fallen beneath an American barber's shears, and his battle-field was
this splendidly equipped building. Officially, he was the janitor; but
he was also the self-appointed and beneficent dictator, feared by all
evil-doers and breakers of rules, and beloved by all who could
appreciate a faultlessly kept building.
"You must see his room," the genial secretary said, with a twinkle in
his eyes, and we followed Gabriel to the topmost story. He opened the
door of his room with pardonable pride, for Prince Nicolas, the ruler of
his country, whose bedroom I have seen and in whose throne-room I have
had audience, cannot boast of an apartment so neat and clean or so
gorgeously decorated. Besides the comfortable furniture, unrivalled in
Gabriel's home-land, the walls were hung with pictures which reflected
prevailing American tastes. Celluloid toilet articles lay upon the
bureau, while many books and newspapers betrayed how this janitor spent
his spare time.
Gabriel's face was radiant from pride, and so was mine; while added to
my pride was a pleasurable feeling to which I could give no other
expression than to ask for another fraternal kiss, which he gave me
with a resounding smack. When we returned to the lobby, I looked over
the group of men gathered there to meet me, and my wits were tested to
place each man according to his nationality. I looked into the face of
one young man, a veritable giant, and before he opened his lips I said,
"You are a Dalmatian." "Yes, yes," he replied, "from Ragusa."
Again I looked into his deep eyes and finely chiselled features. Yes, it
was the type one sees beneath the half-ruined porticoes of ancient
palaces, where young men play the _tambouritza_ and young maidens listen
behind latticed windows; where old men dream dreams of the Ragusan
Republic and its vanished glory, when it vied with Venice in maritime
power, although it never gained her ascendency. Now it is dying a slow
and a forgotten death, beneath shading palm trees, while its warrior
sons, the bluest blood of Dalmatia, are sent to dig coal in
Pennsylvania, and its _guslar_ minstrels make music for the merry-makers
at Coney Island.
What a fine specimen this is which Ragusa has sent us! Ask the secretary
about him and he will tell you that he is intelligent, cleanly,
temperate, and frugal; yet in Pennsylvania he is just a "Hunky." Other
members of the Young Men's Christian Association are loth to see him on
the gymnasium floor with them, and to most Americans he is only an
undesirable immigrant from Southern Europe--something to be dreaded.
"I am an Italian," very proudly says the next man who grasps my hand,
and, looking into his face, I ask doubtfully, "From Italy?" for his face
shows Slavic lines. "From Triest," he adds.
Ah! now I understand. That is where Italian, Slav, and German meet--and
fight, as is the custom of all good Austrians; for each race claims
superiority over the others, and in most of them flows the blood of all
three races.
"You must come to see my kindergarten and my church." I promise; for he
is quite an important factor in the redemption of Little Italy. The next
man is a Slovene from the neighbourhood of Agram, the next a Slovak,
then a Pole, and "last but not least," a Bohemian. All these are
gathered here beneath the sheltering wing of this archangel Gabriel,
janitor of the Young Men's Christian Association and self-appointed,
beneficent dictator and preserver of the peace. He preserves the peace
by carrying out, bodily, offending or offensive visitors--a task for
which he is well fitted. One of his ancestors plunged into the thick of
Turkish foes, dragged a magnificent Pasha from his horse and carried him
across the intervening space in the face of a rain of bullets, one of
which struck him. He fell with his burden; but, quickly recovering his
footing, held the Pasha safe by the throat with one hand, pulled a
pistol with the other, and in a moment argued the distinguished prisoner
into taking him upon his shoulders. Carried thus by the Turkish officer,
he came riding into camp and presented his trophy to his commander,
saying, "This is a fine horse I have brought to you, my captain;" and
then fell swooning to the ground.
The building over which his descendant, Gabriel, watches, is as safe as
a fortress. There are only two things which this brave fears. One is the
steam boiler which provides the building with heat. Steam is an unknown
force in his native land, which even the fiery horse has not yet
invaded; so, no matter how often Gabriel is instructed, no matter how
often he is reassured, when the steam bubbles and hisses he flees for
safety; and to this day, valves, screws, wheels, and radiators are
terrifying mysteries to him.
Gabriel's other dread is--women. Not that he dislikes them; on the
contrary, you should see his face all aglow from pleasure when a woman
looks at him, and yet "trembling takes hold upon him as upon the
inhabitants of Philistia," and he returns to his task as if beaten by an
enemy, all discouraged and distraught.
Rightly used and wisely directed, men like Gabriel can become a power
among us. Over the various nationalities of Southern Europe now coming
here in great numbers, such men can wield an influence more potent,
perhaps, for the peace of the world than the Hague Tribunal.
Nine men of nine nationalities grasped hands in that Young Men's
Christian Association lobby at Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and formed a
circular chain like unto the chain formed by the ancient Slavic heroes
when they swore fealty to old "Duchan." Thus did we pledge our faith to
this new country as we exhorted one another to patience, to justice, and
to love.
In leaving Hazleton I was asked by one of its citizens, "What will these
foreigners do to America when they get the power?"
My answer was, "They will help you save it, or they will aid you in
destroying it. It is very much in your own power whether they shall be
'leaven' or 'dynamite.'"
P. S. Gabriel has left Hazleton. He is now in New York, a valuable
member of the Immigrant Department of the Presbyterian church, and they
say that this Montenegrin is "leaven" and not "dynamite."
XVIII
THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN
Of all animals, man is the most brutal. Naturalists still disagree as to
the reason for his cruelty, but whatever it be, he has not often stopped
to ask himself the cause. He hates and smites and slays, simply because
he hates.
It is true that man's historic brutalities are hidden under the gloss of
what he calls patriotism or preservation of the race; but if the average
man were asked the cause for his own unbridled hate of other races, he
could give no intelligent answer.
That race hatred is a primitive passion is no doubt true, that it is
seemingly ineffaceable is also true; for neither education nor religion
has obliterated it; indeed both, strange to say, seem to have
intensified it. Even the religion of Jesus Christ, whose main endeavour
was to break down the tribal prejudices and hate of races, has not only
failed to accomplish its object, but in its historic manifestation has
in many cases aggravated it.
Whatever the cause, be it the old tribal spirit, the ethnic motive or
the opposing religious dogmas; whatever has been endured by one or
other of the races and for whatever cause, the Jewish race has suffered
for all causes, has suffered everywhere, has suffered long, and has not
yet seen the end of its sufferings anywhere.
There is no country in which the Jews have been in any large numbers,
where they have not endured and are not now enduring persecution. There
is no country to-day of which we can say that the causes which led to
their persecutions have been removed.
This is as true of Germany as it is of Russia, and as true of the United
States as it is of Austro-Hungary.
Every fair minded Jew knows this, and because he knows it he would
rather not talk about it or hear it talked about.
Every fair minded Gentile knows it, although perhaps he would not be
willing to acknowledge it, even to himself.
Undoubtedly, there must be reasons for an attitude so universal, and
before we can apply any remedy, it is necessary to analyze the disease.
First: The Jews have been able to maintain the tribal spirit during
periods when it was breaking down all around them. The tenacity
necessary for this and the extremely exclusive methods used, blocked
every avenue of social approach and aroused the suspicion of their
neighbours. Whether these neighbours were Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans,
Greeks, Slavs or Teutons, they hated the Jews because they kept
themselves separate.
The feeling of superiority which the Jew felt, soon degenerated into
contempt for the Gentile and was fostered by the fact that the mass of
the people with whom he came in contact was beneath him culturally,
using the word in its broadest sense.
The Jew could read and write when his Gentile neighbours did not know
the alphabet.
The Gentile bowed down to stocks and stones, to priests and Pope, while
the Jew held his head erect and covered, even in the presence of
Jehovah.
The people who thus voluntarily excluded themselves from Gentile society
were finally kept aloof by law, and when their masters became their
equals, and in some respects their superiors, the way of approach was
effectually blocked; until now, the aversion of the Gentile for the Jew
is fixed, and seems almost ineradicable, much as the Jew may wish to
free himself from it.
Second: Religious prejudice is another vital factor leading to this
antipathy between Jew and Gentile; although it is not the only one. It
manifested itself early in some of the New Testament writings, grew more
intense as the church began to overshadow the synagogue, reached its
height during the crusades and is still a compelling force among the
common people all over the world.
The myth that Jews used the blood of Gentile children for their Passover
feast very early gained currency, and this, coupled with the fact that
it is the anniversary period of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection,
has always made Easter time a season of brutal outrages against the
Jews.
In reality, the Church has never been quite blameless in these fanatical
outbreaks; although it is also true that Church dignitaries at all times
have tried to shield the Jewish victims. In most cases, however, they
have made no effort to put out the fire until after it was well started,
and consequently were too late.
Yet I firmly believe that religious prejudice alone does not account for
this feeling, because it exists in irreligious and religious people
alike; among those who are quite indifferent to the fact that Jesus
lived and who have but a vague and distant interest in His crucifixion.
The late Prof. Nathaniel S. Shaler of Harvard, one of the most
broad-minded observers, after an exhaustive study of the subject, comes
to these conclusions.[1]
"The greater number of those who have helped me in this inquiry note
that there is, on contact with those who are characteristic Jews, a
distinct and peculiar state of mind aroused by the intercourse. They are
conscious that the feeling is other than that which they experience when
they meet those of their own race; but there is, as might be expected,
no clear agreement as to the precise nature of the impression.
"So far as I have been able to gather, the state is emotional and
instinctive, being in effect the same as that which is always excited by
contact of racially different men. To support and explain this primitive
emotion, there is a natural effort to find some peculiarities of aspect
or demeanour in the neighbour. As to what these idiosyncrasies are,
there is a considerable difference of opinion. The greater number of the
observers agree that there is a failure on the part of the Jews to
respond in like temper to the greeting which they send them; they agree
further that there is generally a sense of avidity, a sense of the
presence of the seeking, in the Jew, for immediate profit, a desire to
win at once some advantage from the situation, such as is not
immediately disclosed, however clear it might be to an interlocutor of
his own race. Several have stated that the offense came from a feeling
that the Jew neighbour was smarter than themselves, having keener wits
and a mind more intent on gainful ends. Others state that the Israelite
spirit makes a much swifter response to the greeting the stranger gives
them than the Aryan, and that the acquaintance is forced to such a
degree as to breed dislike.
"This last noted feature in the contact phenomena of Israelites and
Aryans appears to me a matter of much importance, especially as it
accords with my own experiences and with observations formed long before
I began to devise and criticise theories on this subject. As one of the
Deans of Harvard University, I have been for ten years in a position
where I have to meet from year to year a number of young Hebrews. It has
been evident to me from the first that these youths normally respond
more quickly to my greeting than those of my own race, and that they
divine and act on my state of mind with far greater celerity. They are
in fact so quick that they are often where I am, in my slower way, about
to be, before I am really there. This would make them at times seem
irritating, indeed, presumptious, were it not interesting to me from a
racial point of view. To those who are in nowise concerned with such
questions, this alacrity is naturally exasperating, especially when the
movement is not only one of wits but one of sympathies.
"We all know how disagreeable it is to have the neighbour call on us for
some kind of affectionate response, before we are ready to be moved, and
how certain is such a summons to dry the springs which else might have
yielded abundantly. In our slow, Aryan way, we demand an introductory
process on the part of the fellow man who would successfully appeal to
our emotions. Our orators know this, and provide ample exordiums for
their moving passages; none ventures in the manner of the Hebrew prophet
to assume that his hearers will awaken at a cry.
"In observations made for me by young men, students in Harvard College,
and thus under my own eyes, so to speak, I have confirmation of the
hypothesis that an important part of the difficulty of social contact
between these diverse people is due to the difference in the way their
minds work when they come together. It is an unhappy fact that the last
wave of anti-Semiticism, that which led to the semblance of persecution
in Germany and to the abomination of the Dreyfus incident in France,
swept across the Atlantic and affected to a considerable extent the
social position of the Jews in the United States. They became unwelcome
in clubs, and in hotels; their daughters were not admitted to certain
private schools; and in various ways the unhappy people were made to
feel the ancient burden as in this country it had not come upon them
before.
"Of this resurgence of dislike, the Hebrew students had some, though not
a serious share. Thirty years ago, when the Jews began to be an
appreciable element among the students of this university, there was no
evidence whatever of dislike to them. They took their places among
their mates with no reference to their race; that indeed seemed, so far
as I could discern, to be quite unnoted. Following on the last European
epidemic of hatred to the Israelites, there has developed among this
body of students an evident dislike for their fellows of that race. The
feeling is by no means universal or intense; it is condemned by the
greater part of the leaders of opinion among these young men; yet it is
sufficient to be noticeable and to awaken keen regret in all those who
love the catholic and human motive which so long has inspired that
school. One of my helpers in the effort to find the reason for this
state of mind summed up his acute observations in the statement that
when one spoke to the Jew kindly, 'the fellow climbed all over you.'"
I agree with nearly all Professor Shaler says; but I am sure that there
are two facts which he does not sufficiently emphasize. First: The
anti-Semitic feeling was carried to Harvard on the wave which came from
France during the Dreyfus trial. This is important; for it proves my
point that race antipathies are contagious, and that it does not matter
whether the contagion springs from an ethical or unethical source.
The psychological law for this lies in the now fairly well explored
field of the "mob" and is a common phenomenon from which many races have
to suffer.
The second point made by Professor Shaler is that which refers to the
Jewish mind. That quick response which the Jews give, which is so
obnoxious to the Gentile, was certainly not disagreeable to Jehovah; for
if we trust Holy Writ, He often held converse with them and made the
quick Jewish mind the vehicle of His thought.
This quality of the Jewish mind made an Amos hear the roaring of the
Lord's voice in the lonely wilderness; it made an Isaiah hear the call
of Jehovah amid the din of the traffic of Jerusalem, and brought to the
ears of a Paul the heavenly voice, on the road to Damascus.
This quality of the Jewish mind also betrays his "seeking for immediate
profit" and explains the repulsion felt by Professor Shaler's friends,
and felt by American people in academic circles and out of them.
In my judgment the difference between the Jew and other commercial
people lies largely in the fact that the Jew cannot so well conceal his
desire to make profit. It is written upon his mobile face and conveys
itself in the shrug of his shoulders and the upturned palms of his
hands.
For that reason the Jew is not successful in those forms of business
which demand that their commercial features be hidden. He does not make
a good life insurance agent, for here one must assume the rôle of a
benefactor; nor does he make a good book agent; for in that work one
must seem disinterestedly interested in the entire family or sell the
book as a great favour to a few cultured people in the community.
Although the Jew, especially in America, becomes a fairly clever
gambler, he is a poor match for the Gentile in the game of poker, and
for a long time to come he will have to keep out of games in which the
mask one assumes determines their success; even as he will have to
continue to do business in scrap iron and not in railroads, in
pawn-shops and not in politics.
In my experience with Jewish tradespeople in America, I am convinced
that the sense of immediate profit is no less present in the Gentile
mind than it is in that of the Jew, and that the Gentile does not always
completely conceal it.
There is at least one sphere out of which the Jew keeps his business
more carefully than does his Gentile competitor, and that is the sphere
of religion.
I have yet to see Jewish hymnals invaded by advertisements, as are those
of some Gentile congregations, and although the Jew is a direct
descendant of those traffickers whom Jesus drove out of the temple, he
has managed to keep his synagogue much more free from commercialism than
his critics have their churches.
In the great and solemn moments of life, he is not nearly so practical
as the funny papers would have us believe. At the birth of a child, at
the marriage feast and at the death-bed, he shows his natural idealism
and gives, forgives and forgets.
All this is not quite so true of other commercial peoples, notably the
Americans. The following instance may not be typical nor may it prove
the rule, and would no doubt be attributed to a Jew, had it not occurred
in the college town in which I live and where all the clothing dealers
are Gentiles, if not Christians.
One of them was suddenly taken to a distant city to be operated on for
appendicitis, and the next day a local paper contained the following
advertisement:
"I have gone to Rochester, Minn., to have my appendix cut out. This will
be a great cut, but it will not compare with the cut I am making in
clothing at my store on the corner of X and Y Streets."
After the operation, while the man hovered between the unknown places, a
second advertisement appeared.
"I am having a hot time holding down a bed in this hospital; but it does
not compare with the hot time my competitors will have in meeting my
prices in clothing at my store, on the corner of X and Y Streets."
My readers will agree with me that this "beats the Jews."
The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that
I wish to discuss in another chapter.
I have not set myself the task of playing the apologist for the Jew or
for any of the groups of which I treat. I freely acknowledge that there
are disagreeable qualities in the Jew which explain in a measure, at
least, the prejudice aroused by him.
Foremost, I suppose, is the type which, when it is most pronounced, is
apt to be unpleasant and unsympathetic.
The offenses against good taste in dress are marked in many of them; but
that lies more in the air with which the clothes are worn than in the
clothes themselves. They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not
in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles. The love of
display is to some degree common to both Jew and Gentile; but is more
noticeable among Jewish women, because they cannot conceal their
feelings as well as the Gentile woman can.
The Jewish woman who has "arrived" and knows it, wants the whole world
to know it also; while the Gentile woman, especially the Gentile
American woman, wears her first imported gown and diamonds as if her
swaddling clothes had been made in Paris and her original baby pins
encrusted with jewels.
Still more apparent is a certain arrogance, a most annoying
characteristic, especially in a people which ought to have the quality
of humility in a large degree. The Jew recognizes this in his fellow Jew
if not in himself, and no one more deplores it.
He calls it Jewish _chuzpa_, Jewish "cheek," and it is, perhaps, one of
the greatest causes for the social barriers raised against him. It is
found in the Jewish beggar and in the Jewish millionaire.
It is an ancient fault; for long ago, "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked."
It is a quality which leads many eminent Jews to acts of unwisdom, such
as protests against Christmas exercises in the public schools; the
resolution passed by a recent conference of Jewish Rabbis, that America
is not a Christian country, and other acts equally unadvised.
This, also, has its causes, which are found among many peoples suddenly
released from disabilities and given social and political rights.
In order to introduce my main theme, the relation of the Jew to the
Christian, I have tried conscientiously to analyze the causes which
obstruct the social contact between Jew and Gentile.
There are real antagonisms arising from the Jewish mind and habits,
which are historic inheritances and cannot be easily overcome; but which
have made it often a hard task for the Christian to be a real Christian
towards his Jewish neighbour.
There are other barriers, however, and they exist first, in the historic
development of Judaism and second, in the nature and content of historic
Christianity.
The Jew is heterogeneous in cultural development. There are Orthodox
Jews, wrapped in cabalistic mysticism, who have never moved an inch
along the pathway of progress; to whom not only each word written in the
law of Moses has divine origin and divine meaning, but to whom each word
has as many meanings, as it has letters and dots and dashes. Upon these
Jews, all the fetters of legalism are still rivetted, and to them,
tradition and revelation are one and the same.
There are less Orthodox Jews who have progressed as far as the
philosopher Mendelssohn led them a century ago.
There are nationalistic Jews to whom Zion is beckoning, and who hear the
voice of the prophet bidding them "possess the land" and promising that
"the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion, with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads" and that then, "sorrow and sighing
shall flee away."
There are modern Jews, who have forsaken the law and the ordinances, the
Sabbath and the full moons, to whom the reformed synagogue is merely a
connecting link with the historic past.
There are rationalistic Jews to whom Karl Marx is the Messiah, and the
Socialistic commonwealth, Jerusalem; and there are just Jews, who eat
Kosher food because they like it, to whom Mammon is the Messiah and
their business the Holy of Holies.
To none of these does Christianity in its historic development appeal
very strongly: First, because becoming a Christian means separation from
the race; for heterogeneous as the Jews are in cultural development, so
homogeneous are they in their racial consciousness. This is something
which baffles analysis; it is the strongest example of race cohesion
which we have. People who have lost national unity, who have diverged
widely in religious beliefs and ceremonial observances, who are as far
apart in culture as Greek and Barbarian, are still one as a race, and
the man is _Anathema_ who breaks the racial tie. It matters not whether
he does it to escape persecution, to gain preferment, or from deep
conviction; to his fellow Jews it is always apostasy.
That the broad-minded Jew may have a race consciousness which breaks
through the ties of blood, they admit; but he must not become a
Christian, even if to him Christianity is the only escape from the
narrow tribal idea and from his own outgrown race consciousness, into
the broader realm where he can say that he is a member of the human
race, and as such is under the obligations of brotherhood to all men.
In the second place, Christianity in its ceremonies, its ecclesiastical
practices and its theology, is repellent to all these Jews, from the
extreme radical to the extremest Orthodox.
Anything which has even a semblance of idolatry, the slightest suspicion
of Polytheism, must be obnoxious to the Jew; for he has been smitten by
hail, drought and pestilence, and has been led into captivity because
his unregenerate nature delighted in the worship of Baalim, and because
he forsook Jehovah who dwelt between the Cherubim and the Seraphim.
Then, too, the methods used to win the Jew to Christianity have aroused
his opposition. In the Old World, until comparatively recently, he was
forced once a year to attend church and listen to a sermon preached with
the avowed object of his conversion. Needless to say, it rarely, if
ever, converted him.
The modern method as it manifests itself in Jewish Missions is no less
repellent to him; although he is not forced to listen to the
missionaries' sermons. Naturally, the converted Jew, who is an official
converter, is usually under suspicion, although that suspicion is not
always justified.
With this question of race consciousness and habits, the Jew alone can
deal, and he, unfortunately, is not always in the frame of mind required
to adjust himself to the feelings of the Gentiles. He will therefore
have to bear the consequences which lie in the social realm and may soon
reach into the economic.
The task of historic Christianity in its relation to the Jew is not an
easy one. It cannot unmake itself or readily adjust itself to his likes
and dislikes in theology; nor can it recede from its endeavour to make
propaganda for the faith which it believes should be universal.
I have the conviction that when Christ comes fully to His own in the
church, He will also come to His own in the synagogue; certainly no
sooner, and perhaps not much later.
When He emerges from the tangle of Greek philosophy, Roman legalism and
Byzantine traditionalism--when "in deed and in truth" He becomes the
Gentile's Messiah, He will also become the Messiah of the Jew.
As a working basis for the right relation between Jew and Gentile, I
wish to quote Rabbi Sonnenschein, formerly of Des Moines, Iowa, in words
spoken by him to a colleague in the Christian ministry.
"I want to live so, that when you see me, you will say: 'There goes
Rabbi Sonnenschein, who is a Jew; yet he is a better Christian than I
am.' And I want you to live so, that when I see you, I will say: 'That
man is a Christian; but he is a better Jew than I am.'"
XIX
THE JEW IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM
The Jew has nearly always been an immigrant and a problem. Nowhere is he
accepted as indigenous; neither in Russia, where he has lived for
centuries, nor in New York, where he will soon represent the bulk of
population. He is as much a stranger on his home soil in Palestine as
upon the rawest bit of ground staked into a city, in Wyoming or the
Dakotas. His going is nowhere regretted at the time and his coming is
not welcomed; while his remaining in a place leads to the development of
prejudice, which has its root in various causes, already discussed. In a
peculiar sense, his coming in large numbers is felt by the toiler and
the trader; by the most antagonistic Gentile groups and by those Jews
who came earlier, from some more favoured spot in the culture centres of
Europe.
The religious development of the Anglo-Saxon people, influenced more
often by the Old Testament than by the New, as well as their familiarity
with the Bible, has kept the Jew who lives among them immune from the
grosser consequences of Anti-Semitism.
[Illustration: A JEW OF THE POORER TYPE
A product of persecution and orthodoxy.]
[Illustration: A JEW OF THE FINER TYPE
A Russian Jew; cultured, artistic and cosmopolitan.]
Jehovah's chosen people have often been regarded with peculiar interest
by the Anglo-Saxons, if not always treated with marked favour; yet even
among them, this feeling has gradually undergone a change, until, their
coming has become a cause for special inquiry by the English Parliament
and one of the chief difficulties of the whole immigrant problem, as it
affects our cities.
I have had peculiar opportunities to note the development of these
changes, and believe that the Jew has been too optimistic regarding his
future in the United States; while the Gentile is too pessimistic as to
the gravity of the Jewish problem.
A clergyman in the city of New York whose fame is international, who is
in constant contact with the best type of Jews, startled me not long ago
by saying that the Jewish problem in the city of New York was in a most
acute stage. In analysing his own feelings, he said: "No matter what you
do, you're up against it; no matter how you prepare yourself to act the
brother towards them, they won't let you succeed. You can't love them
and you don't dare hate them."
Mr. Robert Watchorn, the ex-commissioner of immigration, told me that
after an address in which he minimized the problem of immigration, a
well-known citizen of New York came to him and said that in twenty years
Kisheneff will have its counterpart on the East Side.
One of the most liberal Jewish rabbis in this country, whose addresses
teem from the most extreme optimism as to the future of his race in
America, will be amazed to hear that because he was invited to preach
the baccalaureate sermon in a Western state institution of learning, a
large number of the class absented itself from that service. In
commenting upon it, I heard one of the number say to another, in
unacademic, campus language: "Tough luck, boy. They've invited a Sheeny
to preach our baccalaureate. It's an insult to the class!"
The fact that twenty per cent. of the students at Columbia University
are Jews, has led a number of Western boys to say to me: "We won't go to
Columbia. There are too many Jews there."
No less brutally frank expressions I have heard in the shops in which I
have worked, and in hotel lobbies where I have loitered; so that while I
may not regard the Jewish problem as the most serious in the general one
of immigration, I certainly regard it as one of the most sensitive to
approach and one of the most difficult to solve.
I usually ask four questions regarding every immigrant group, and the
answer determines, in my own mind at least, the desirability of its
coming to the United States. The four questions are:
First, Do we need them? By that, I mean, will they perform some useful
function which is necessary and which the earlier comers cannot or will
not perform? This is entirely an industrial question and can be safely
answered only by the economist, who knows the field in all its bearings.
My conviction, based upon no such accurate knowledge, is that we most
need those groups which live by their muscle, rather than by their wits;
the toiler, rather than the trader. If my theory is correct, this would
exclude many Jews; although I am sure that they have performed many
important functions in the industrial sphere, both in the realm of
manual labour and out of it. Some such discrimination seems to me fair,
for it would bar classes, rather than races, and would affect equally
other commercial people, such as the Greeks, Armenians and Syrians.
Whether or not this first question is fundamentally sound, of one thing
I am sure. Half the ill feeling against the Jews would vanish if they
would give themselves in any large numbers to the mechanical trades and
to agriculture.
Second, Does the group which seeks admission have the same economic
ideals which characterized the earlier groups?
This refers to standards of living as well as to standards of making the
living.
The Jew answers well to the first part of the question; in fact, better
than the Latin or the Slav. Although he may be compelled to eat plain
and coarse food, he craves the richer and daintier fare; if he has to
live in a tenement on the East Side, he does it with an eye to a flat
in Harlem; for the Jew has never ceased looking for the "land flowing
with milk and honey," or longing for the "flesh-pots of Egypt." His
standard of living is not low, but as some one has said: "elastic." He
may eat red herring to-day, but to-morrow he will eat carp with garlic
sauce; that is, if he can afford it.
He will control his historic appetite in order to "get on," and it is
the subordination of health and decency to this desire which often makes
him an economic problem, if not a menace.
But when he has attained, he is no miser. His children must have the
best education, and his wife the most expensive clothing; he will save
his children from the sweat shop if he can, and his wife whether he can
or not. He is not willing to live off his children or on the town;
although he is not always above living on his more fortunate brethren,
whom he thus gives a chance to earn the divine favour by bestowing alms;
he rarely sinks into pauperism.
The agencies which minister to pleasure, the theatre, the concert hall
and vaudeville, would lose a fair share of their patronage if Jews were
excluded from them.
The Jew is neither a total abstainer, nor is he intemperate, and his
expenditure for alcohol, compared with that of the Irish, is about as
one to a hundred. None dreads the coming of Jews into a neighbourhood
more than the saloon-keeper, and some of the vilest localities in New
York have been made fairly decent by the expansion of the Ghetto.
One of the most difficult questions to answer is, whether Jewish ideals
of making a living accord with those which characterize the older
groups. The popular judgment is that they do not. It is commonly charged
that the Jew degrades the industries upon which he enters; that as a
competitor he is unscrupulous and as an advertiser, dishonest. "Jewing
down" is a phrase too well known in commercial life to need
interpretation.
Whether it is the "quality of the Jewish mind" which has created this
judgment, as Professor Shaler indicates, or whether it is the quality of
his moral nature, I am not in a position to determine. All I can say
with a sense of assurance is, first, that the business morality of the
Jew not only compares favourably with other commercial groups which are
coming to the United States, but is generally admitted to be higher than
that of the Greeks and Armenians.
Second, That the so-called Jewish business ethics, which in reality are
Oriental and not essentially Jewish, and are also prevalent on the
continent of Europe, do not compare favourably with the straightforward
business methods traditional in America.
Third, That the Jew has adopted these American standards in the lines of
business which he controls, and that in every city he is counted among
its most substantial and reliable business men.
Fourth, That although the methods used by large numbers of Jews in
business are often questionable, as is often the business itself, they
have a remarkably clear record in the sphere of high finance, and that
it is most fortunate for the well-being of the Jews in America that the
so-called "Captains of Industry" are a native product.
Roughly speaking, then, the charges that the Jew is an unfair competitor
in the industries and in business may be true; yet if the case were put
to a jury which could to some degree free itself from prejudice, the
result would probably be a disagreement. What could not be easily denied
is, that the sense of truth in the Jew from the east of Europe, notably
from Poland, is low.
I quote Mr. H. S. Lewis of London, a Jew, and an unprejudiced
authority.[2] "One is sometimes tempted to conclude in despair that the
bulk of the Polish immigrants have no sense of truth whatever. No more
painful spectacle can be witnessed than the hearing of a summons at an
East-End police court, where the parties concerned are foreign Jews.
Obvious perjury on the slightest provocation is committed in case after
case. The comments of Judge Bacon at the Whitechapel County Court on
this fact have been at times severely criticised by the Jewish press.
His generalizations may have been too sweeping, being based on his
experience of petty litigation, where the seamy side of life is
necessarily prominent. At the same time, his remarks have been based on
a substantial substratum of truth. It is the experience of most visitors
among the foreign poor for charitable societies, that although absolute
imposture is exceptional, falsehoods with regard to the details of cases
are constantly met with.
"It is to this taint of untruthfulness that most of the other defects of
the foreign Jews are to be traced. I fear that it cannot be denied that
their standard of business morality is often defective. A statement of
this kind may be regarded as unfair, and it is, of course, difficult to
put it to any exact test. An illustration is, however, afforded by a
return of convictions, periodically issued in the minutes of the London
County Council, for the use of false weights and measures and kindred
offenses. Judging by the names of the offenders, an altogether undue
proportion of them appear to be foreign Jews.
"We meet also in East London with far too many cases where the
Bankruptcy laws are evaded by persons who pass through the courts and
reappear in business with suspicious celerity and without apparent
loss."
The testimony of Rev. Max Wertheim of Ada, Ohio, ought to have some
weight--it concerns the Americanized Jew. He was a rabbi at Dayton,
Ohio, and after passing through various religious crises, became a
Baptist, and is now doing devoted work on a small salary. Naturally, he
has not received the most generous treatment from his former
co-religionists, and would hardly flatter them. In answer to my question
whether he found any difference in business standards between his Jewish
and his Christian flocks, he unhesitatingly said that there was no
difference.
More weighty is the testimony which Prof. Graham Taylor gave recently
before a Christian Brotherhood. "I know as good Christians among the
Jews as among the churches."
I am quite sure that basically there is no difference; although I should
characterize some Jewish methods as mean, and those of some Gentiles as
dangerous. In making this distinction, however, I realize that "wooden
nutmegs," high-bottomed fruit boxes, sun-kissed apples at the top of the
barrel and gnarled ones at the bottom, as well as other tricks of the
native trade, are mean enough; while the methods of the theatrical
trust, the adulteration of foods and drugs, the white slave trade and
other questionable forms of business engaged in by both Jew and
Gentile, may be called both mean and dangerous.
It is also interesting to note that in the great industrial struggle the
Jew is represented largely on the capitalistic side; but on the other
hand, some of the strongest leaders in the labour unions and many of the
Socialists of the rank and file are Jews; consequently the _vox populi_
may condemn them for being both.
The third question is: Does the group possess ethnic qualities that will
prevent normal assimilation, and therefore will increase race friction
already dangerously strong?
Disagreeable as is the Jewish type when very pronounced, it is
undergoing such rapid changes where the environment is favourable, that
it does not present a serious barrier to assimilation. The issues of
intermarriage are exceptionally good and the resultant types normal. Yet
in spite of the vanishing type, the Jews are a peculiar people and will
long remain so. Their historic inheritance and their religious
traditions, no less than their attitude towards the Gentiles and the
attitude of the Gentiles towards them, will naturally keep them a group
apart. The hostile attitude on both sides ought not to be strengthened,
and I believe that for a period at least, Jewish emigration from the
east of Europe should cease. Not because I believe the Russian Jew
inferior, but merely because he is numerous and the ethnic and cultural
difference between him and the native is so marked as to aggravate an
antipathy already intense; this the Jews themselves feel.
A Jewish merchant, who lives in a certain town in the Middle West, told
me that strong Anti-Semitic feelings were aroused in the community by
the arrival there of Russian Jews, and that as soon as they moved away
the feeling vanished.
Another Jewish merchant told me that in visiting various places with a
view to locating his business, his first inquiry was: "Are there any
Russian Jews in the town?" He said that business for the Jew is better
where there are no Russian Jews.
The feeling of the Americanized Jew towards this new immigrant was thus
expressed by one of them: "We have to stand by them, but we wish they
hadn't come."
My fourth question refers to the attitude of the groups towards our
social and political ideals.
If the family ideal is the basis of our social and political life, it is
certainly safe in the keeping of the Jew, who, if he errs at all in that
direction, errs in making the well-being of the community or state,
secondary to the well-being of his family.
In spite of the fact that divorce, according to the rabbinic law, is
easily obtained, almost as easily as in some of our Western states, it
is rarely resorted to. Sexual immorality, wife desertion and divorce,
become more common among the Jews only under stress of changed economic
and religious environment.
The criminal record of the Jew is still good; although he is under
suspicion of merely being too shrewd to be caught.
In the so-called lesser and meaner crimes, such as receiving stolen
goods and pocket-picking, he has almost a monopoly; while in burglary
and murder his record is fairly clean.
At present there are no reliable statistics on this point, and there is
much chance of juggling with figures, for friend and foe alike.
The report of the Commission of Immigration of the state of New York
presents a table of foreign born white offenders in the state's prisons
in 1904, but unfortunately does not classify the Jews as such. However,
if one took the entire number of criminals tabulated under the countries
from which the Jews come, namely: Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland,
and counted all as Jews--a procedure manifestly unfair, even then the
prison population of the state of New York contains over twelve per
cent. more Irish than all the natives from these four countries, who of
course are not all Jews, but represent different faiths.
In lieu of reliable statistics, therefore, I must trust to my own
experience. I have found that grosser criminality among the Jews is a
more abnormal phenomenon than among most of the newer immigrant groups.
In my intimate acquaintance with a number of Jewish communities in
Europe, I know some as large as 10,000 souls, where such crimes as
theft, robbery and murder are never committed; yet where cheating,
fraudulent bankruptcy and receiving stolen goods are not uncommon.
The Jew has done himself almost irreparable injury by his protest
against the reading of the Bible, and Christmas exercises in the public
schools and in his attitude towards Sunday laws. In both cases he has
shown himself intolerant, and has alienated staunch friends whose help
and sympathy he may need in the day of tribulation. As a citizen and
patriot, he is everywhere giving evidence of his devotion; while in the
struggle for the coming of a better day in the government of our cities
and of the state, he has done his full share; indeed, among the newer
immigrant groups, he has furnished to that cause by far the largest
quota.
There are several points at which the Jew does not satisfactorily answer
the questions I ask. He provides far too large a number of those, who,
as a class, seem unnecessary at the present stage of our economic
development; he presents too solid a differentiated group, will retard
proper adjustment and increase existing race antagonisms. His attitude
towards the manifestation of the religious spirit in our public
schools, his intolerance towards certain religious practices which are
fundamentally ethical and social, but not necessarily sectarian, will
more and more alienate those Americans who have been most hospitable
towards him and upon whose good will he is dependent, economically and
socially, if not politically.
These, I think, are the sore spots of the problem; and if the Jew is as
shrewd as he is painted, he will look to their healing; while if the
American is as charitable as I think him to be, he will give the Jew
full time for reconvalescence.
XX
FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO THE GHETTO
It has always been dangerous for the common mortal who was the spokesman
of his kind to eat at the king's table; for the tyrant at close range
proved an admirable host and pleasant gentleman, whose tender meats and
delicate wines covered a "multitude of sins."
When, after having eaten _lunch_ on the East Side for a week, one
receives an invitation to _luncheon_ on Fifth Avenue, even the most
scrupulous may temporize, and I confess that, feeling highly flattered,
I tossed my scruples to the winds and accepted the invitation.
The feast began for me, when my eyes rested on the splendid architecture
of the palatial residence, its furnishings, marbles and pictures, which
appealed to my artistic sense and almost reproduced the atmosphere of
the refinement and culture of those lands in which they had their birth.
In the winter garden where fountains played, and rare flowers nodded
their bedewed heads, filling the air with fragrance, I forgot the
squalor of the East Side and the darkness and dampness of that raw,
February day.
With the luncheon I was less pleased; for frankly, I prefer noodle soup
and _Gulyas_ to French snails and terrapin.
To my plebeian palate the snails tasted like mucilage flavoured with
garlic, and the terrapin like fricasseed Turkish towels.
Of more importance than the menu was my host, whose every word betrayed
the consciousness of his power and his ignorance of those lesser folk,
as whose champion he had invited me to be his guest.
"What can be done to stay the power of Socialism?"
"How can we keep out Black Hands and Anarchists?"
To him, immigrants, Socialists and Anarchists were synonymous terms. My
speech was not yet dulled by the luncheon or my brain clouded by the
smoke of his Havana cigars, and I gave him such plain answers as I might
have given after lunching on noodle soup and _Gulyas_.
My words were as unpalatable to him as his snails and terrapin were to
me; for I told him that Anarchists live in brown stone houses and that
Socialism is being fed and nourished on Fifth Avenue. Our views were as
far apart as our bank accounts, and to argue with him seriously would
have been as useless as it would have been poor taste. He became more
human as the luncheon progressed from its airy and aristocratic entrées
to the more democratic and substantial roast beef and potatoes.
When we reached pumpkin pie, one of the few connecting links with his
humble past, he had quite lost his critical sternness, and asked my
advice upon so delicate a matter as how to give his wayward sons a
grappling place for the upbuilding of character.
I suggested work in the Settlements; but he regarded them with
suspicion, declaring that they are irreligious and a breeding place for
Socialism. He listened with indifference to my defense of these
institutions which I regard as among the most valuable agencies we have
for the common good. I suggested some public service for the community
or the state.
"Politics?" he asked quizzically; "it's a dirty game. I want my boys to
help me take care of the interests I have."
I did not know what those interests were, nor did I care to inquire, and
luncheon being over, I rose to take leave.
"Where are you going?" asked my host, rather abruptly.
"To the East Side," I replied.
He wondered whether I was not afraid to go there, and when I told him
that I felt safer in the Ghetto at night than I should feel two blocks
west of his palace, he asked whether he might accompany me.
Knowing the free and easy ways of the Ghetto I assured him a hearty
welcome; so we left his home together and took the car for Houston
Street and Avenue B to attend the _Gulyas_ banquet to be given by the
"Bolsover Sick and Benefit Association," in its hall on Houston Street.
Sunday afternoon is the day on which the East Side looks its best. Its
squalor is temporarily hid beneath the festal garb of the rest day; the
children are still clean after their weekly scrubbing, and the mothers
sit on the stoops, gossiping and watching with the Old World timidity
their agile flocks playing in the middle of the street, also fairly
clean in comparison with its condition on the busier work days, when the
refuse of push-carts and ash cans covers it.
My millionaire host evidently found pleasure in this human mass. He saw
children who seemed happier than his own; for although they had fewer
pleasures, they had no governess to dog their footsteps, no maid to keep
them from exertion and no fear of microbes or bacteria.
Here in the Ghetto all the unrestrained child nature asserted itself,
and being children they had no thought for the morrow and having been
born in America, they were boisterously happy.
My host decided that after all humanity on Houston Street is not so
different from that on Fifth Avenue. The women, especially the younger
ones, were gowned as fashionably although less extravagantly; pony coats
being the style on Fifth Avenue were also found on Houston Street, and
most of the women who paraded both streets looked very much as if they
belonged to the same herd.
Hats were as expansive if not as expensive in this hemisphere of the
social world as in his own; while pride and social prejudice were common
properties of both.
Our entrance into the lodge room, on the fourth floor, over a _Kosher_
restaurant, was announced by the outer guard, after which a committee
came out to meet us. Then pledging us to secrecy we were escorted to
places of honour at the right and left of the Grand Master of the lodge.
The small room was completely filled by over one hundred members, and
after the business under discussion was finished, we were duly
introduced and addresses of welcome were made by officers and prominent
members.
I doubt that my fellow guest ever listened to addresses which he enjoyed
more than those he then heard, spoken in broken yet picturesque
language; and I am sure he never before realized that such lofty
sentiments lodged in such humble hearts and amid such forbidding
surroundings.
These hundred and more men, we were told, were bound together in
fellowship to help one another when unemployed, to support and nurse one
another when sick, to pay the last honours to the dead and to protect
the widows and the orphans.
And that was not all. It is the object of this lodge to work for mutual
intellectual improvement, and although politics are tabooed, the lodge
strives to develop noble, patriotic ideals among its members.
Of the men who spoke, I have known some from their childhood, and all of
them since their arrival in the United States.
It will not break the pledge of secrecy to say a word about these men,
typical immigrants from Hungary.
The Grand Master was born in a Jewish home in which the best traditions
of the Hebrew faith were adhered to. I have been there many a time
carrying messages from son to parent, and it was always a delight to
meet the saintly old father and mother who have never ceased being
homesick for their boy. He has gone through a hard school in America,
from sweat shop to laundry; and now he is a letter carrier.
The Past Grand Master is a wood-worker who tried business, but failed
and is now back at his bench.
Another is a metal worker, and his calloused hands prove that he obeys
the Divine injunction, and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.
The man who proposed our being made honorary members of the lodge had
entered the University of Vienna, suffered moral bankruptcy and ran away
to America. He is a cloak presser.
The man who seconded his motion is a waiter, the prodigal son of a rich
father, brought low by his iniquities; but kept from utter ruin by the
fellowship of these men.
I know the record of them all; good and bad records, like those of other
groups of men; but every one of them is now earning his daily bread and
is contributing something to the wealth and the weal of the great city.
My millionaire friend frankly confessed that he had never seen a "bunch"
of men which impressed him more favourably than these--and well they
might impress him; for they all looked like toilers. Labour had bent
their forms, parched their skin and shadowed their eyes.
It was a long meeting, until far into the night. Several times the outer
guard had announced that the _Gulyas_ was ready; but not even the odour
of its rich sauce which pervaded the building could stop the flow of
eloquence, once set in motion, or curb the eagerness with which rival
candidates battled for office.
At last the Grand Master smote his desk with his gavel for the last
time and the "meetunk" was adjourned.
In proper order and ceremoniously, we were conducted to the basement of
the _Kosher_ restaurant. The steaming _Gulyas_ was on the tables, beer
and wine awaited the thirsty guests and the banquet began even before
all the members of the Bolsover Association were fairly seated.
My companion looked askance at the bowls of _Gulyas_ with its red gravy;
but it wooed his appetite through his nostrils and he gained sufficient
courage to take a piece of the well cooked meat with its dripping sauce.
Then I saw him eat as I had not eaten of his French snails and terrapin.
The members of the Society drank their modest measures of beer and
Hungarian wine as toast followed toast.
It had been my privilege not long before to have a conference with
President Roosevelt, and as I rose to toast the chief magistrate of the
United States, I repeated a few of his trenchant sentences. "Elyen!
Elyen!" the men shouted when I mentioned his name; and when I said that
the President had expressed to me the hope that we strangers should so
live that the country which gave us "sanctuary," a place to work in and
to live in, might be proud of us--the enthusiastic "Elyens!" seemed
unending. After the banquet, the man who had successfully run for the
secretaryship invited us to come into his home, not far away. My host,
having had a taste of the East Side and wanting more, readily accepted
the invitation.
We found this home in the second story of a tenement house on East Ninth
Street. We entered through the kitchen, and in the one other room,
living room, sleeping room and nursery combined, was the man's wife with
their three daughters. The youngest was in bed, the older one was
reading, while the oldest was entertaining friends--two or three girls
and a young man, her "steady company." The room was crowded, but clean,
and my Fifth Avenue friend sat down and looked at the novel picture
before him.
The young people chatted about the recent ball of the Bolsover Sick and
Benefit Association, of clothes and beaux; very much as they talk of
balls and clothes and beaux on Fifth Avenue.
Refreshments were offered us, and then the father told of his good
fortune in having been elected secretary of his lodge. Every one was
delighted; but the younger daughter, this little Jewish child, said:
"Papa, why don't you run for president, once?"
He replied: "My child, don't you knows that I gets paid for being
secretary, and gets nothing for being president?"
Upon which, this child of the Ghetto faced her father half angrily,
crying: "Why, papa, don't you know that honour is more than money?"
We left the tenement house together and walked across to Broadway, all
along that gaily lighted thoroughfare, illy named the White Way.
Theatres and concert halls were being emptied, and we were jostled by
the crowds. My friend spoke never a word until we reached the marble
steps of his home. Then, pressing my hand, he said, with almost a
tenderness in his voice: "Honour is more than money."
XXI
FROM LAKE SKUTARI TO LAKE CHAUTAUQUA
When I told a group of friends that I was to speak to the Albanians of
Jamestown, N.Y., one of them, who knew both her history and her
geography uncommonly well, said, questioningly: "Albanians? Are those
the people with white hair and pink eyes?" Then, realizing that Albinos
and Albanians are not identical, and being genuine enough not to conceal
her ignorance, she asked: "Do you mean the people from Albany, N.Y.?"
She may be pardoned for not knowing who the Albanians are, although they
are one of the oldest European peoples, who have kept a corner of that
continent turbulent, in the attempt to wrest from their master, the
Turk, the right of political existence.
One cannot say that the Balkan would have been a peaceful nook had it
not been for these Ghegs and Tosks, as the two main divisions of the
Albanians are called; but certainly, the history of Turk, Greek and
Southern Slav would have been different had it not been for the
Albanians' clinging tenaciously to ancient rights, and their many
struggles against continuous oppression.
[Illustration: ALBANIANS
ON LAKE SKUTARI
The most savage of the Balkan people.
ON LAKE CHAUTAUQUA
The newest of the Pilgrims, attending the Congregational
church, Jamestown, N. Y.]
The new régime in Turkey feels this Albanian iron in its veins, for one
of the leaders in the new parliament is of this race, as are many of the
most virile editors of Turkish newspapers. Both officers and privates in
the army which wrought the overthrow of the Sultan are of these same
people, who regard themselves as superior to the Turks and to whom no
greater insult can be given than to call them by the name of their
oppressors.
In my travels through the Balkan, I have often passed through some
portion of Albania, which is a narrow strip of land along the Adriatic,
between Montenegro and Greece, with much of its interior inaccessible.
Its savage state was encouraged by Turkey, which maintained there a
borderland against the power and ideals of the West.
Every village was an armed camp, every house a fortress. Tribal warfare
never ceased; neither the holy seasons of the Church nor harvest time
knew the blessings of peace. Every Albanian was a soldier or brigand and
sometimes both, loyal to those to whom he had sworn loyalty; but the
musket was law between him and the stranger, and the bullet its
executor.
Trained for slaughter, the Albanians spurned common theft, but did not
shrink from murder, for pillage or for revenge. The last time I saw them
at home, was on the shores of Lake Skutari, retreating to their native
mountains in the Albanian Alps, after having pillaged a Montenegrin
village, one of the few prosperous enough to make a raid worth while.
They were resting on a rocky hillside, and as I attempted to take a
snapshot, they resisted religiously, good Mohammedans that they were, by
emptying their rifles after me, doing no more damage than frightening my
worn-out team into a gallop.
To say that the next time I saw them, was in the prayer-meeting room of
a Congregational church, describes graphically the difference between
then and now; for it was a docile, conventional looking company of men
that I met; their fierce mustachios shaved or cropped, their muscular
bodies clothed in the commonplace garments of our civilization. Their
eager, black eyes alone spoke of the hot, Albanian blood in their veins
not yet chilled in our cool, workaday atmosphere.
Neither Gheg nor Tosk ever had a chief like the one who led them that
night in singing the "Shcipetari" song, the battle hymn of Albania; for
he who wore the red skullcap of the chief and beat time as they sang,
whose placid face was lighted by a deeper passion than their own, was an
American,--Arthur Baldwin, Patent Attorney and lover of common folks.
One by one he had gathered them as they drifted into the city by the
lake. "Dagos" they were called; homeless, neglected and treated with
scorn. One after another they swore fealty to their new chief, until now
every one of them acknowledges the sovereignty of his passion over them.
Half savage as the Albanian is, he has a fine feeling for womanhood.
Woman is man's fortress; for he is safe from the enemy's bullets when in
her company, and she may kill the man who has broken his troth with her.
While the men are loyal to Mr. Baldwin, they feel for Mrs. Baldwin a
sacred awe, and well she deserves their reverence; for she has been
mother and sister to these homeless youths and has taught them the
English language by a method of her own.
Most of the Albanians in Jamestown, and many of those who have scattered
east and west from there, carry with them Mrs. Baldwin's letters, which
are the English lessons for the week, combined with cordial greetings, a
word of good cheer, and advice.
In the prayer-meeting room of that church of the pilgrims, these newest
of the pilgrims sang that night their national hymn.
Ce me gne te Kollozhégut,
Ch'u fillua Shocerija,
Ce me gne te Kollozhégut
Ch'u fillua Shocerija
Ch'u fillua, brénda m'u ne Sofijé
Per skoli nde, Shciperi.
Ch'u fillua, brénda m'u ne Sofijé,
Per skoli nde Shciperi.
Burra, burra djéma, burra djém,
Burra djém perpicuni.
Burra, burra djéma, mbuhuni,
Mbushuni mé dashuri.
S'jémi Gréker as Bulgare,
Jémi trima Shcipetare
S'jémi Gréker as Bulgare,
Jémi trima Shcipetare
Dhente Zoti la me la,
Afer ghér nde Pérendi,
Dhente Zoti la me la,
Afer ghér nde Pérendi.
Burra, burra djéma, burra djém,
Burra djém perpicuni.
Burra, burra djéma, mbushuni,
Mbushuni mé dashuri.
The music is savagely martial, although the words are commonplace; for
the Albanian, like the rest of us, is thanking God that he is not as
other people, especially the detested Greeks and Bulgarians.
After the singing, the men danced. Shades of the Puritan ancestors!
Dancing in a prayer-meeting room! But inasmuch as these were
semi-civilized people, the dance was decent and full of religious
symbolism. The men swayed their agile bodies to the wild notes, bent the
knee, then two by two joined hands, forming a cross; thus making their
dance an act of worship.
Then I spoke to them of their mountain home and of this one; of their
old tribulations and their new opportunities; of their old feuds and
their new friendships. When I finished, they crowded around me and
pressed my hand, because they had found one who knew them, their fierce
nature and their unsurpassed devotion to their native land. I could not
help thinking of their brothers who, ten years before, chased me along
the shore of Lake Skutari with guns.
While I am sure that Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin would not desire praise for
the work they are doing among these people, the methods they have used
and the spirit which has animated them are so remarkable as to deserve
emulation. Their basis of approach to the Albanians was undisguised and
unadulterated friendship. They liked common folks. As other people on
the shores of Lake Chautauqua liked automobiles or steam yachts of
particular makes, so among folks, the Baldwins liked Albanians. Being
their friends, they wanted to do them good, and what they most needed
was ability to understand English; so they taught them English and with
the new language they have given them the atmosphere of home and
impressed upon them the need of character to save them from the new
temptations.
Wiser than some others who have attempted to do good to strangers, they
restrained their religious ardour and left Greek Orthodox and
Mohammedan undisturbed in their faith, except as by their example they
taught them that love is more effective than its symbols and deeds more
vital than creeds. Neither have they tried to deaden the old patriotism;
and the one great, starry virtue of the Albanian which is almost
unparalleled, is his devotion to his country.
After I had spoken that night, I was escorted to a restaurant kept by
one of them, and there over the steaming coffee we talked of Albania's
griefs and hopes.
Mr. Baldwin knew every nook and corner of the country and its history.
He spoke of Albania as if he had been cradled among those far-away
mountains, instead of on the placid plains of the Middle West. He
deplored the fact that they had no schools in which their own speech was
taught, that religion held them apart, through factions of Greek
Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Mohammedans; and he talked of Scanderberg,
their national hero, as if he were speaking of Washington or Lincoln.
Mr. Baldwin had invited me to Jamestown, to counsel with his men, who
are doing the most menial tasks to earn money for Albania. At that time
all was dark in Turkey, and a visionary alone could have held out hope
for an autonomous Albania.
Practical American that I have become, I told them to save their money,
start bank accounts and become prosperous Americans. They knew better;
at least they had more faith. They were then training a man in an
American college, for political and social leadership; a young Albanian
noble, who spoke eight languages, had faith in God and man and, above
all, in Albania.
Until long past midnight I talked of peace while they talked of war; I
spoke of submission, while they talked of resistance; I thought I knew
Turkey and the Turk, while they had faith in Albania and the Albanians.
The recent developments prove that their faith was better than my
knowledge.
When the Jamestown Albanians scattered as far east as Natick, Mass., and
as far west as St. Louis, Mo., their old friends aroused interest in
them everywhere. In Natick, Mass., a devoted pastor, Rev. Morris H.
Turk, has matched the Jamestown work for these "twentieth century
pilgrims" as he calls them. He has learned enough Albanian to lead in
devotions, and has fitted out a chapel with chancel, altar and pictures.
"We began," he says, "where the Greek Orthodox church left off. We
secured some Albanian hymn-books from Monastir, and thus we were enabled
to conduct a somewhat formal religious service, largely in the Albanian
language. Socials, entertainments, receptions, picnics and other
diversions supplement the religious and educational work done at Natick.
"The results have been remarkable. Two of the men are fitting for
college, a dozen or more have blended completely into the parish life,
and best of all, a hundred or more have had the uplift of friendliness
and acquaintance with our American ideals."
Mr. Turk is making a tour of Albania this summer for the express purpose
of rendering his service to these people more effective; to see life
from their view-point and to acquire a better knowledge of their
difficult language.
Mr. Guy J. Fansher writes from Boston, where he has become interested in
them: "Their love of country is very strong and, like the old Hebrew
prophets in Israel and Judah, we find it necessary to carry on whatever
religious work we may wish to do side by side with their love of
country. This same love of country has been evidenced in their
translating of the Orthodox Church ritual into the Albanian and using
that in their church service monthly in a rented hall.
"I found the men apt to stay indoors too closely, so during the winter
gave them work in gymnastics, using dumb-bells, basket-ball, etc. We had
some flash-light pictures taken of these classes, which the boys were
eager to buy and send home.
"The men are close readers of the daily papers, soon get interested in
politics (were strong for Taft), get out naturalization papers as soon
as possible, and are proud to be in America. They soon learn to dress in
neat suits of brown which is very becoming to them with their dark skin
and hair.
"The men seem to have good control of their habits, seldom drinking to
excess; the cigarette is always with them, however; the social vice is
not theirs to any great degree; they are neat about their rooms and do
not crowd together as the Italians or Jews. These things have rather
assisted our work among them; their exceeding shyness has been hard to
overcome; they must be led, not driven."
"They must be led, not driven," and Mr. Baldwin adds: "They must be
trusted, not suspected; loved, and not merely tolerated."
The events in Turkey have surprised every one who has an interest in the
Balkan question. The young Albanian noble, already referred to, is back
in Albania, somewhere near Lake Skutari, helping shape the future of his
country; for he is a leading member of the Albanian Committee.
On Lake Chautauqua his countrymen still work and pray and hope for an
autonomous Albania, with schools and churches in which they shall be
free to use their language and in which they shall have privileges
commensurate with their sacrifices and with the burdens they have borne
for Turkey.
Then they will sing in Kortia the song they sang in Jamestown, when we
parted before the early dawn of a winter's morning. It was a national
hymn, which the Albanians have a right to sing, although they sing it
under the crescent banner of Turkey; for it is a translation of
our--"America."
O Zot Ti fucimath,
Ndihna si ghér tashi
Te lutémi;
Lardi tet'apeme
Mé ghithe zémere:
Per dashurimne T'ent
Ce shoheme.
XXII
THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AND THE IMMIGRANT
The one institution in America most gravely concerned with the coming
and staying of the immigrant is the Protestant church. Each ship-load of
people from Southern and Southeastern Europe increases the already
crowded Roman Catholic parishes, lays foundations for the perpetuation
of the Greek Orthodox church in the United States and enlarges the tents
of Israel whose camps encircle the dying churches.
The Protestant church, in our great cities, pointing to the decrease in
her membership, as evidence of her peril, and bravely singing "Onward
Christian soldiers, Marching as to war," moves into the suburbs, away
from the congested masses and among the attenuated few.
That the Protestant church has endured thus far, that its ideals are
still dominant, that its preachers' voices are still heard in the
tumults of our Babels, is direct evidence that somewhere her foundations
rest upon bed-rock and that the Christian faith and practice, as she
understands them, are essential in the solution of the problems of our
civilization. Because I believe this, I am not frightened by figures but
am concerned with forces. It is not a question of the ability of the
church to increase, but of her willingness to decrease, if necessary, in
the attempt to communicate to these masses, from all races and
religions, her passion for humanity and her devotion to the Divine.
I am not at all concerned regarding the inability of the Protestant
church to adjust other men to her creeds or to adjust herself to theirs;
but I am deeply concerned with her inability or unwillingness to make
good her professions of democracy, and to relate herself in some vital
way to these new citizens who are satiated by creeds, but are hungry for
brotherhood; upon whom, like a curse, rest the damp and mould of tombs
and chapels, but who have been untouched by the power of the living,
redeeming Christ, as He has incarnated Himself in His followers.
So long as these people are within the sphere of Foreign Missions, in
"Greenland's Icy Mountains," or some other remote and romantic place,
they are the subjects of prayer and the recipients of gifts of men and
money; but when drawn into the radius of one's immediate neighbourhood,
they become a peril which threatens everything, from the price of real
estate to the foundation upon which the church rests. There is no
question that in many cases the Protestant church is facing this
problem in an admirable spirit; although very often expressing it in a
way calculated to alienate rather than to attract. On the whole there is
a growing desire to serve this new host of men, to help them adjust
themselves more easily to their new environment and to make of them
conscious human beings, consecrated Christians and efficient citizens.
There are to-day increasing numbers of Protestant Christians who have
broken away from the old prejudice against the Roman Catholic church. It
is not their desire to alienate faithful communicants from the church in
which their individual and national life has root and being; but they
recognize certain facts.
First, that in this new influx of immigrants there is an appreciably
large number of men who have fallen heir to Protestant traditions,
without fully realizing their spiritual inheritance and their moral
obligations. To these, the American Protestant churches owe the duty of
interpreting their common faith in its practical terms.
Second, the church realizes that numbers of men, more than are commonly
supposed, among Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Jews, are lost to
their respective churches. Many of them revert to infidelity and
Paganism, and the Protestant church is under obligations to interpret
its faith in rational terms to these, who have been touched by the
rationalism of our times.
One cannot believe that it is good for such men to be left under the
influences of these reactions which may become dangerous to the
well-being of the individual and of the State.
Third, the church finds itself surrounded by large masses of men,
ignorant of our language, of the laws of health and of the land. They
come from countries in which neither Church nor State has attempted to
lift them out of ignorance and its attendant superstition; and whenever
the churches in whose bosoms these people have starved in the Old World
do not make amends here in the New, the Protestant church is called upon
to lift them into a better knowledge of the nature of religion and into
a better conception of human relations, both for her own sake and for
the sake of the communities which she wishes to serve.
This she must do, even if it brings her under suspicion of proselyting;
although with my knowledge of nearly all the agencies engaged in this
task in the United States, I am convinced that the spirit in which this
work is undertaken is not the spirit of the proselyter. Indeed, one of
the growing weaknesses of the Protestant church in America is the loss
of those deep convictions which make proselyting easy; while the number
of those who have the courage zealously to pronounce their shibboleths
is growing smaller every day.
The spirit of the following letter justifies its quotation, for it is an
admirable example of the way in which one Protestant church is trying to
meet the immigrant problem.
---- AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,
HARTFORD, CONN.,
_Pastor's Study, December 17, 1907_.
I am writing this letter to you as an office-bearer in the church
and one who is influential in forming church sentiment and
policies. It concerns the relation of our church to the Jews who
are crowding into the streets about the church in ever-increasing
numbers. The Standing Committee has earnestly and sympathetically
considered the subject, as befits a matter of the first importance
to our church.
The settling of these Jews close about us is easily the event of
greatest importance in recent years in the field of this church. It
would be folly, and in the end impossible, for us to look upon
their presence with indifference. We must not drift in this matter.
We must have, as a church, an intelligent and positive policy
towards them. What shall it be?
Some of us have probably looked upon the coming of the Jew as a
misfortune. Is he not also an opportunity? May we trace the
providence of God in settling him about our very doors? I believe
that we may. This faith grows in me, as one who believes that
Christ is to be Saviour of all the nations.
A rabbi in Boston said recently, "The liberty and friendliness of
America will put the severest strain upon Jewish exclusiveness that
it has ever met. The persecutions of Europe have failed to
dissolve our nationality: the kindness of America may succeed."
In the light of this sentiment, which I share, and with a great
confidence in the Gospel, I propose that we undertake definitely a
Christian ministry to these Jews. I recognize that an attempt at
immediate propagandism would probably be as ineffective as it would
be unwise. I appreciate that probably few if any open conversions
will reward our labours for many years.
What then shall we attempt? To impress upon them the spirit of the
Gospel by living alongside them as Christians should: this first
and chiefly. Let us do this in the hope that as their old-world
superstitions and narrowness yield to the light of America, they
will thus choose the Gospel instead of infidelity. Many of them are
already choosing the latter.
How shall we begin? By treating the Jew as we want to be treated.
In other words, by treating him not as a Jew, but _as a man_, each
on his own merits. Recognize always that there are both good Jews
and bad Jews, as well as good Yankees and bad Yankees. Make the
acquaintance of both men and women: and of their children too. Give
them a fair chance to show their quality. They are neighbours. They
are interested in our schools. They are fellow citizens. These
common interests give opportunity to know them and, if we will,
their homes also.
Our government by its franchise and its schools welcomes them to an
equal opportunity to show and to develop their character. The
churches have not shown a like spirit. Shall the state be more
Christian than the church?
This proposal of course includes our attitude towards the Italians
and all other foreigners among us. I speak especially of the Jews
because they are far the most numerous and most difficult to reach.
If a score or even a dozen of us should undertake to show them the
spirit of brotherhood that is our Christian boast, and should seek
to get our other church-members to do the same, it would not be a
month before they would be feeling and speaking of our good will
towards them. Meanwhile we can be watchful for opportunity for some
special ministry to them or their children, a ministry which shall
be welcome both to them and us. The habit of Christian
neighbourliness outlined above will lay the foundation of mutual
confidence and knowledge necessary for such a special ministry.
Have you faith and patience for such a long campaign? Will you
quietly enlist for it and try to persuade others to do the same? If
so, will you kindly tell me of it? We will undertake to keep one
another informed of any news of progress.
You will understand why this letter and your talks with others
about this subject should be confidential.
In the name of Him who was a Jew,
YOUR PASTOR.
The Presbyterian church has given proof of the spirit of its intent by
putting the department of Immigration in charge of Rev. Charles Stelzle,
a splendid champion of the rights of labouring men, a man with the
broadest social and religious outlook and a stranger to Pharisaic cant.
The Rev. Howard N. Grose, D.D., the home mission secretary of the
Baptist church, and the men associated with him in the Home Mission
Council of the Evangelical churches, seem to me to possess that broad
outlook upon life, that appreciation of true values which render
impossible their attempting any narrow, sectarian propaganda.
The action of the International Committee of the Y.M. C. A. in placing
its work for "Young Men and Boys of Foreign Parentage" in charge of so
competent an authority as Dr. Peter Roberts, the author of "Anthracite
Communities,"--and the equipment by the State Committee of Pennsylvania
of "The Expedition for the Study of Immigration" with its plans for a
group of well trained college men as secretaries for immigrants, are
additional evidences of the spirit which animates Protestantism in its
relation to the immigrant.
There are, however, two fundamental mistakes which the Protestant church
has made in her attempt to solve the problem she faces.
First, in the kind of results she tries to obtain.
Second, in the kind of men she has sent to represent her among the
immigrants.
The American Protestant of the Evangelical type has carried his business
into the church, but not always the church into his business. He expects
in the church, results which can be tabulated under the head of profit
and loss, just as he expects them in his counting-room.
[Illustration: FACULTY AND AMERICAN STUDENTS AT THE MISSIONS-HAUS,
KATTOWITZ
The young men are members of the Pennsylvania Y. M. C. A. Expedition for
the Study of Immigration. The school is strategically situated where
three empires meet. It is non-sectarian and interdenominational;
permeating the East with Christian ideas.]
"Immediate results!" is the cry of the constituents of missionary
enterprises, and the result is, that where they cannot be legitimately
produced, conversions are simulated for loaves and fishes.
I do not mean to say that missionaries have not so preached and
practiced the Christian faith, as to produce in their hearers a desire
to adjust their own lives to these new standards; for I know of
innumerable cases of this kind among all races and nationalities.
However, the stress laid upon "immediate results," the praise and money
lavished upon those who can produce them, the "showing off" of this or
that kind of converted foreigner, the neglect of those who face real
difficulties honestly, and cannot humbug those who support them, put
severe temptation in the way of missionaries and often unconsciously
taint their whole endeavour.
If the Christian religion expresses itself in unselfish devotion to the
noblest cause,--the service which the immigrant needs must be performed
without an eye constantly upon church records.
The Social Settlement is under no such strain, and its work is like
"casting bread upon the water" without expecting it back, "buttered"
after a few days.
For a long time and even for all time with some individuals and groups,
the church must be willing to follow this Biblical example set by an
institution which some ill informed people suspect of being irreligious.
The error which the church has committed in sending poorly prepared men
to minister to these immigrants is in many cases as irreparable as it is
inexcusable.
An ignorant priesthood is more bearable than an ignorant ministry, and
when ignorance is coupled with insincerity, as it is in many cases, the
wrong done to both parties is incalculable.
In their haste to "do something," and in their eagerness to get quick
results, nearly all Protestant churches have pushed into the ministry
"converted foreigners," many of whom misrepresent the church which sends
them and become a stumbling-block to honest seekers after truth and an
insult to the people to whom they are sent.
An example of this lack of wisdom is shown in one of the most
interesting missions of a really valuable type, developed in West
Pittston, Pa., by a devoted young American woman who, in a remarkable
degree, won the confidence of the Lithuanians there. She lived and
laboured among them and created a centre of influence which gave great
promise of being permanent in its effect. Her work, however, was much
too indefinite and slow for the "hustling" church which supported her;
so a converted Lithuanian was employed, who in his eagerness to save
souls told the people whom he gathered to hear him preach, that they
would all be damned if they continued going to the Roman Catholic
church. The result was what one might expect. The Lithuanians
immediately forsook the mission and went to the prohibited church.
As a rule, the work to be done demands American born men and women who
are imbued by the spirit of service, who have some linguistic talent and
much consecrated common sense.
The converted foreigner, even if well trained, will be met with
suspicion by many groups; for to them he is a traitor to their religion
and to their national life, the two being inseparable to them.
No such objection can be made to the American worker, who, if he brings
patience to the tedious task of winning confidence, if he has an honest
desire to live unselfishly for the people of a neighbourhood, if he
gives everything and expects nothing as a reward, may be assured that
such service will be accepted and will work out its results in God's own
time.
If converted immigrants are sent among these people, they should have a
long testing time; a tutelage and training which, while giving them a
thorough equipment for their task, will not spoil them for the humble
work it will involve.
There are but few theological seminaries properly equipped to train men
for this great work, and still fewer in which there is sufficient spirit
of democracy among teachers and students to receive "immigrants" and
treat them like brothers.
In many small, industrial communities where the "immigrants" are a
problem, its solution is merely a question of the attitude of the
churches towards them.
Nothing can be more repellent than the attitude of the average
Protestant Christian towards the immigrant of to-day. As a rule he is
prejudiced, is grossly ignorant of the historic and religious background
of the strangers and meets every one of them with suspicion.
At a recent Summer School of the Y. M. C. A. it was my privilege to
teach a class of young college men numbering about 150. They were
studying this problem, and the questions asked, a few of which I quote,
prove the assertion just made.
"Do not three martyred presidents prove that the immigrant is an
Anarchist and ought to be excluded?"
"Is it not true that ninety per cent. of the criminals in the United
States are foreign born?"
"Do not foreign governments dump their rubbish of criminals and paupers
upon our shores?"
"Is the Constitution of the United States safe in the hands of people
who crucified Jesus?"
"Did not our forefathers come to fight for liberty, and do not these
people come to despoil us?"
The questions asked displayed such animosity and such ignorance, that to
print them all would seem like slandering our Western colleges and the
churches in which these young men were reared.
The churches and the Y. M. C. A.'s have no small task in converting
their membership to some Christian view-point of these, their
neighbours; even if they cannot be converted to a spirit of
brotherliness.
The following instance, while not typical, shows the attitude of Y. M.
C. A. memberships in many industrial communities, towards the immigrant.
An Association in Pennsylvania wished to enlarge its building and
solicited funds in the shops of its own community. Slav and Hungarian
day labourers subscribed $2,000, every cent of which was paid; which
cannot be said of all the money subscribed by Americans.
Some of these foreigners were anxious to learn English, and one of the
rooms in the building--not the best--was opened to them and a teacher
procured. When one of these boys used some of the public conveniences
in the building, the American membership notified the secretary that the
"Hunkies" must not be admitted to the building; and they were not, in
spite of the fact that they had helped pay for its erection.
While no other such gross injustice has come to my knowledge, I know of
many Y. M. C. A.'s in which an Armenian or Greek would be excluded from
such a thoroughly religious privilege as taking a bath.
Wherever a church or Y. M. C. A. has shown itself hospitable to the
strangers it has had as many of their souls to keep as it has cared to
have; but most of them prefer to save the foreigner by "absent
treatment."
The feeling of the strangers regarding the efforts which the churches
are making on their behalf in so-called missions, which are often
repellently unclean and devoid of any saving grace, is explained in the
following letter, written by a graduate of Oberlin Seminary, a young
Pole, whose spirit and intelligence the letter itself reveals.
BRECKSVILLE, OHIO, OCTOBER 14, 1907.
_Prof. E. A, Steiner, Grinnell, Iowa._
MY DEAR DR. STEINER:--Your plan for the solution of our foreign
problem, as you indicated it in your articles in _The
Congregationalist_ of last year and as you outlined it to me in our
conversation in Cleveland last week, is excellent; and I wish to
tell you that I am in thorough sympathy with it. My own personal
experience in the foreign work convinces me that the easiest, most
economical, and most effective way of solving the foreign problem
is through the American church and the American worker directly.
This for the following reasons: First, mission work established for
the foreigner strictly in his own tongue is not particularly
acceptable to him, and to some it is even offensive. The foreigner
regards himself to be a Christian, and, consequently, resents the
idea of mission work done distinctly for his particular benefit in
order to make a Christian of him. Second, a worker of his own
nationality is looked upon by him with suspicion. As you expressed
it, he is regarded a traitor, and is not to be trusted too much.
When I was in the work, I had that experience over and over again;
I felt that my countrymen, that is, a good many of them, when they
found out that I was a Pole and not a Roman Catholic, had grave
doubts as to whether it was safe for them to trust me. Third, by
coming to the mission, the foreigner feels that he is committing
himself too much all at once--something which he is very unwilling
to do. Then, too, in the mission he is too conspicuous, and thus
too much exposed to persecution from his countrymen. Fourth, our
greatest hope is, not in the grown-up generation, but in the
growing generation--the children and the young people; and these
can be reached more easily through the American church than through
a mission of their mother tongue, because they want to be regarded,
not as foreigners, but as Americans. These difficulties would, to a
large extent, be obviated if we tried to reach the foreigner
directly through our American churches and other religious
organizations and through American workers acquainted with the
history of the different peoples, their characteristics, habits,
and ways of thinking and looking at things, and to a certain extent
with their language also, and in perfect sympathy with them. Of
course, the work done at present by the mission ought not to be
discontinued; it has its place and its value; but it ought to be
supplemented by this better and, as I believe, more effective
method which you have in mind and which you propose to our churches
for adoption.
Sincerely yours,
PAUL FOX.
I do not quote this letter because it approves my plan; for I do not
hold dogmatically to any one method. The work of saving men is
desperately hard and there are a thousand ways of doing it.
More important than any plan is a right attitude; for in all human
contact it is the spirit within the man or institution which counts, and
not the precise method of approach.
Wherever an approach has been made in the right spirit towards the
foreigners, they have responded in kind, and many Protestant churches
have been enriched by their presence, by the ardour of their faith and
their willingness to sacrifice for their convictions.
There is, as I have said before, no institution in the United States
which will be so profoundly affected by the immigrant as the Protestant
church. Without him she will languish and die and with him alone she has
a future.
Already the Roman Catholic proclaims the conquest of America, and while
that conquest is not complete, it soon will be, unless Protestantism
wakens to the wealth of its heritage and its great opportunity; unless
with a real sympathy and passion it teaches, preaches and practices the
religion of Jesus.
The Protestant church need not rival the Roman Catholic church in
building stately places of worship, or clothe herself in gorgeous
vestments, or read ancient liturgies.
The immigrant comes from just such environment, and nothing that the
Protestant church can do in this direction will be as beautiful and as
impressive as that which he has left behind.
The one way and the only way in which she can enter into a successful
rivalry with the ancient, Apostolic church, is in reviving the ancient,
Apostolic passion for humanity.
Having quoted so many letters, I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting a
small part of one written long ago, at a time when the church faced a
crisis not unlike the one which she faces to-day.
"If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any consolation of
love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and
compassions, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind, having the
same love, being of one accord, of one mind; doing nothing through
factions, through vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each counting
other better than himself; not looking each of you to his own things,
but each of you also to the things of others. Have this mind in you
which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, counted
it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and
being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly
exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that
in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and
things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father."
XXIII
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT
It is now twenty-five years since I landed in the United States with a
group of Slovaks from the district of Scharosh in Hungary.
I followed them across the sea and watched this historic movement of the
Slavs, who until then had remained practically dormant where they had
been left by the glacier-like movement of their race, the pressure of
the invader or the fate which governed Eastern European politics.
It was a fascinating experience to see these forgotten children of an
unresponsive soil coming in touch with a civilization of which they had
never dreamed; to see the struggle of emotions in their usually
impassive faces, as they saw the evidences of European culture and
wealth in the Northern cities through which we passed.
What fear crept into their hearts and drove the healthy blood from their
cheeks when for the first time they saw the turbulent sea.
The ocean was vaster and the fear of it most real to us who sailed out
of Bremerhaven in the steerage of the steamer _Fulda_; for we were the
forerunners of a vast army of men which had scarcely begun to think of
leaving its age-long bivouac. The Slav has never taken kindly to the
sea, and the "_More_" held unconquered terrors.
It is difficult now to describe the incidents of that first landing in
New York, for in rapid succession the experience has been so often
repeated; and all the joys, fears and hopes which repeatedly I have
shared with hundreds and thousands of men are so blended in my memory
into one great wonder, that either analysis or description seems vain.
It is strange and yet natural, no doubt, that I remember the trivial
incidents of that first landing. The attempt on the part of some of my
Slovaks to eat bananas without removing the skins; their first
acquaintance with mince pie, which they declared a barbarous dish; our
first meal on American soil, in a third rate boarding-house for
immigrants, and the injunction of one of the earlier comers: "Don't wait
for anybody, but grab all you can. In this country the motto is: 'Happy
is the man who can help himself!'"
I remember the lonely feeling that crept over us as we found ourselves
like driftwood in the great current of humanity in the city of New York,
and the fear we had of every one who was at all friendly; for we had
been warned against sharpers. I remember our pleasure in the picturesque
ferry-boat which carried us to New Jersey, its walking-beam seeming
like the limbs of some great monster crossing the water.
Then crowding fast upon one another come memories of hard tasks in
gruesome mines and ghostly breakers; the sight of licking flames like
fiery tongues darting out at us, from furnaces full of bubbling, boiling
metal; the circling camps of the coke burners who kept their night's
vigil by the altars of the Fire God.
There are memories of dark ravines and mud banks, choked by refuse of
mill and mine; the miners' huts, close together, as if space were as
scarce on the earth as compassion for the stranger.
I remember the kindness of the poor, the hospitality of the crowded, the
hostility of the richer and stronger, who feared that we would drive
them from their diggings; and the unbelief of those to whom I early
began preaching the humanity of the Slav--rough and uncouth, but human
still, although he has scarcely ever had a fair chance to prove it.
Of the names of the various towns through which I passed, in which I
worked and watched, I particularly remember four: Connelsville,
Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Streator, Ill., all of them typical
coal towns. In none of them were my people received with open arms,
although they rarely met with organized hostility.
In Scranton and in Streator, they still remember our coming and our
staying. Since then, I have repeatedly visited all these four places
upon errands of investigation and interpretation.
I always dreaded going back to them; not only because it would revive
painful memories of a very hard apprenticeship, but because I could not
avoid asking myself if the optimism with which I have treated the
problem of immigration, by voice and pen, would be justified.
What if the Americans in these cities should say: "We have lived with
these Slavs for twenty-five years and more; we have been with them day
after day, while you have flitted about the country. We know better than
you do. We told you the 'Hunkey' was a menace when he came, and he is a
menace still."
I well know that my readers and my auditors have often criticised my
optimism, and especially the sympathetic note with which I approach this
problem, regarding which they are always more skeptical the more remote
they are from it.
I have tried to modify my view of the problem by facing it in all its
bearings; I have not shrunk from seeing the worst of it. In fact I know
American cities best from that dark and clouded side. I know the Little
Italies, the Ghettos, the Patches around the mines, the East Side of New
York and the West Side of Chicago; although I have never been the full
length of Fifth Avenue and have never seen the famous North Shore
drive.
I am familiar with penitentiaries, jails, police courts and even worse
places; for I wanted to know to what depths these leaden souls can sink,
and I fear that I have more anxiety as to their nativity than their
destiny. Yet, having seen the worst of the bad, I never lost my faith in
these lesser folk and my optimism remained unclouded. One fear alone
assailed me; that what my critics said _to_ me and _of_ me was true. "He
is an immigrant himself, and of course it is natural that he should see
the brighter side of the problem." To me, that was the severest and most
cutting criticism, just because I feared it might be true; yet I have
honestly tried to see the darkest side of this question, both as it
affected the immigrant and the country that received him.
I have listened patiently to jeremiads of home mission secretaries about
these "Godless foreigners." I have read the reports of Immigrant
Commissions, and all the literature written the last few years upon this
subject, and I am still optimistic, and disagree with much that I have
heard and read. Many authors who have written regarding this question
had no first-hand information about it. They knew neither the speech nor
the genius of these new people; they had a fixed belief that all
civilization, culture and virtue, belong to the north of Europe and
that the east and southeast of that continent are its limbo; and they
relied upon statistics, which at best are misleading, when used to
estimate human conduct and human influences.
Typical of this class of literature is a recent pamphlet upon the
subject, which, judging from the excellent biography appended, must be
based upon extensive reading; yet the author comes to this conclusion:
"Assimilation in the twentieth century is a very different matter from
assimilation in the nineteenth. In many respects, the new immigration is
as bad as the old was good."[3]
There are several facts which this author has forgotten, as have those
from whom he draws. First, the older immigrant is not yet assimilated.
In the agricultural counties of Mr. Edwards' own state, there are
townships in which the English language is a foreign tongue, although
the second generation of Germans already plows the fertile fields of
Wisconsin; and there are cities where the Germans have thoroughly
assimilated the Americans.
There are places of no mean size in Pennsylvania, which are as German as
they were 200 years ago, and as far as the Irish everywhere are
concerned, it is still a question what we shall be when they have done
with us.
I venture to predict that the twentieth century immigrant will
assimilate much more quickly and completely than the immigrants of the
eighteenth and the early half of the nineteenth centuries assimilated.
Beside the fact that the process is going on much more rapidly than ever
before, as I asserted, my theories are corroborated by Professor Ross,
of the University of Wisconsin, whose book is suggestive if not
conclusive. Speaking of the assimilation of the immigrant, he says:
"On the whole, those who come now Americanize much more readily than did
the non-English immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Not only do they come from lesser peoples and from humbler social
strata, but, thanks to the great rôle the United States plays in the
world, the American culture meets with far more prestige than it had
then. Although we have ever greater masses to assimilate, let us comfort
ourselves with the fact that the vortical suction of our civilization is
stronger now than ever before."[4]
Neither is any one prepared to _prove_ that the "new immigrant is as bad
as the old was good."
It is very interesting that when authors and speakers quote statistics,
as they usually do, to prove the criminal nature of the new immigrant,
they do not differentiate between the older and the newer groups. If
they did, and would let statistics determine the issue, they would find
that the new immigrant is good and the old bad; yes, very bad.
The following tables, quoted from the Report of the Commission of
Immigration of the State of New York, are worthy the close study of Mr.
Edwards and the authors upon whom he has relied.[5]
STATISTICS REFERRING TO FOREIGN-BORN OFFENDERS COMMITTED TO NEW
YORK STATE PRISONS AND PENITENTIARIES DURING 1904.
_Total Number of Prisoners Committed_
Major Minor
Offenses. Offenses. Total.
Aggregate 3,679 26,136 29,815
Total white 3,345 24,969 28,314
Native white 2,266 16,759 19,025
Native white of native parentage 1,223 10,266 11,489
Native white of foreign parentage 732 4,500 5,232
Native white of mixed parentage 263 1,505 1,768
Native white of unknown parentage 48 488 536
Foreign-born whites 1,075 8,158 9,233
Whites of unknown nativity 4 52 56
Negroes 330 1,139 1,469
Mongolians ... 1 1
Indians 4 27 31
_Foreign-Born White Offenders by Nativity_
Major Per Minor Per
Offenses. cent. Offenses. cent.
Austria 48 4.5 259 3.2
Canada 68 6.3 435 5.3
Denmark 5 0.5 28 0.3
England and Wales 67 6.2 655 8.1
France 19 1.8 119 1.4
Germany 212 19.7 1,136 13.9
Hungary 15 1.4 83 1.0
Ireland 148 13.7 3,569 43.9
Italy 255 23.7 601 7.3
Mexico ... ... 6 0.1
Norway 7 0.7 46 0.5
Poland 30 2.8 232 2.8
Russia 119 11.0 392 4.9
Scotland 17 1.6 220 2.7
Sweden 14 1.3 163 2.0
Switzerland 4 0.4 43 0.5
Other countries 47 4.4 171 2.1
----- ----- ----- -----
Totals 1,075 100.0 8,158 100.0
PAUPERS ADMITTED TO ALMSHOUSES IN NEW YORK STATE DURING YEAR 1904.
BY NATIVITY AND LENGTH OF RESIDENCE IN THE UNITED STATES.
All paupers admitted 10,272
Per cent. of white paupers admitted:
Native 44.0 per cent.
Foreign-born 56.0 per cent.
_Foreign-Born White Paupers Admitted in 1904, by Nativity_
Country of Birth Per cent. Per cent.
Ireland 54.3
Germany 18.7
England and Wales 6.4
Canada (including Newfoundland) 4.3
Scandinavia 2.0
France 0.9
Scotland 2.0
------ =88.6=
Italy 3.5
Hungary and Bohemia 0.6
Russia and Poland 3.3
Unknown 4.0
----- =11.4=
-----
=Grand total= =100.0=
What is more striking still is the following table which seems to prove
that the new immigrant does not increase his percentage in the criminal
column materially, in fact that there is a slight tendency to decrease
it.[6]
_Foreign-Born Offenders According to Years of
Residence in the United States_
Major Per Minor Per
Years Offenses. cent. Offenses. cent.
Under one year 36 3.3 86 1.0
One year 79 7.2 229 2.8
Two years 63 5.8 297 3.6
Three years 52 4.8 285 3.4
Four years 40 3.6 177 2.2
Over four years 824 75.3 7,143 87.0
----- ----- ----- -----
Totals 1,094 100.0 8,217 100.0
I am not trying to prove that the old immigration was worse than the
new; I do not believe that these statistics prove it, in spite of their
appearing to. But they do prove conclusively that statistics of this
kind are absolutely unreliable in furnishing tests of the moral fiber of
this or that group.
Far more reliable is the verdict of various communities after
twenty-five years' experience with the newer immigrant.
Take for example the city of Streator, Ill., which has steadily grown in
size and in the number and variety of its industrial establishments; a
development which could not have taken place without the new immigrant.
There are certain unprofitable seams in the mines which the
English-speaking miners would not have worked; even as there are less
profitable veins which the Slav does not care to touch and which are
being worked by Sicilians, new upon the scene.
It is true that out of the 500 Welsh miners there are only about fifty
left; but the 450 were pushed up and not out and are in no position to
complain. They have moved on to farms and have grown prosperous while
some of the most lucrative business in the city is theirs.
It does seem a great pity that a skilled trade like mining should have
passed into the hands of unskilled labourers; but for this, the
invention of machinery is to blame, and not the foreigner. Had
comparatively cheap labour been unavailable, the genius of the American
would not have stopped until he had all but eliminated the human
element, as he has done in many other trades in which unskilled foreign
labour is not a factor.
Twenty-five years ago I "squatted" near mine No. 3 with my men from
Scharosh. It was as wretched a patch as miners' patches always are. We
bunked twenty in a room and took as good care of our bodies as
conditions permitted; so that when we went down-town we were cleanly if
not stylish.
My men soon learned to drink whiskey like the Irish, swear like the
English and dress like the Americans.
After twenty-five years the patches around the mines in Streator are
practically gone, and the homes there are as good as the Welsh or
English miners ever had. Some of the newer additions in that growing
city are occupied entirely by Slavs and do them credit.
Nor has the Slav been content to remain in the mines; he, too, has begun
to move out and up. He owns saloons and sightly stores in which his sons
and daughters clerk, and it would take a very keen student of race
characteristics to distinguish the Slavs from the native Americans.
"Do you see that young man at the entrance to the Chautauqua?" said Mr.
Williams, its public spirited secretary.
"Racially, his father is as sharply marked a man as I have ever seen,
and the son, a graduate of Harvard, looks as if his forefathers had all
grown up in the salt air of the New England coast."
Here in Streator were the people who have lived with the new immigrant a
quarter of a century and more, and I have spoken to them three times, in
my most optimistic vein; many a man and woman has said:
"You are right, they make splendid citizens."
"They are good neighbours."
"They are as human as we are, and they are proving it."
This, in spite of the fact that in Streator as in Connelsville and in
hundreds of industrial towns, they have been met with suspicion and have
been treated with injustice.
"They are a great strain upon our political institutions," said Mr.
Williams, himself once a Welsh miner, pushed out of the mine by the Slav
and now one of the leading citizens of Streator.
But Mr. Williams knows that the year I lived in Streator, when the Slav
had no vote or influence, politics in that city were already corrupt and
that the corrupters were native Americans, whose ancestors harked back
to the _Mayflower_, and who were rewarded for their corruption by high
political offices. In truth, when the Slav came to this country, there
was nothing left to corrupt, in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre, in
Connelsville or Streator; or, indeed, in all Pennsylvania and Illinois.
The Slav now has some political power; but as yet he has not produced
the "grafter." I do not say that he _will_ not; but when he does, small
blame to him.
In one of the four cities which I have mentioned, I shared with a group
of Poles the vicissitudes of the first few weeks in a boarding-house, a
combination of saloon and hotel, common in Pennsylvania, and usually
offering more bar than board.
One evening an American came among us; a splendid type of agile manhood.
When my men saw him, they said: "This is a prince!" They did not know
that he was a politician. He shook hands with every one of us, and I
said to the men: "This is democracy!" Poor fool! I did not know that it
was the day before election.
Then he marched the men to the bar, and said to the barkeeper: "Fill 'em
up." And as they drank the fiery stuff, no doubt they thought they were
in Heaven, and forgot that they were in Pennsylvania. When the whiskey
took effect, they were marched into a large hall, where other Poles,
drunk as they, were congregated; speeches were made, full of the twaddle
of political jargon which they did not understand, and when morning
came, these Poles, so intoxicated that they did not know whether they
were North Poles or South Poles, were marched to the voting-place and
sworn in.
I have told this story in each of the four places referred to, and in
the place where it occurred, a judge, who was among my audience, said to
me: "Don't tell that story again."
"Why not? It is true," I replied.
"Yes," he said, "it is perfectly true; but you'd better save your
strength. In this city, not only the foreigners, who are not citizens,
vote; but the dead vote, long after they have become citizens of
Kingdom Come."
One of these same Poles recently took me through the Capitol of
Pennsylvania at Harrisburg. With great pride he guided me from
foundation to dome, pointing out those objects of interest which every
stranger must see, as if they were the memorials of noble deeds of
valour.
They consist of wood, painted to imitate marble, chandeliers of base
metal, to be sold by the pound, at fabulous prices, and among many other
spurious things, a safe, supposed to be fire-proof and burglar-proof,
but which was not politician-proof, for an ordinary gimlet bored a hole
into its corrupt heart.
What was distressing to me was not so much that the State paid millions
for this veneered and varnished fraud, but that my Polish guide
pronounced the word _graft_ with evident relish and without fear or
shame.
I do not doubt that the presence of the new immigrant is "a great strain
upon our political institutions"; but not greater than the old immigrant
was, and still is. This certainly is true of Pennsylvania; for there are
counties in that state, into whose wilds the new immigrant has not yet
penetrated, and where those who have been living off its fat acres since
their birth--the sons of immigrants who came 200 years ago--hold their
right of franchise cheap. I am told that in these counties nearly every
vote can be bought for five dollars.
This may be idle rumour; but the fact remains and can be proved by any
one who chooses to investigate, that Scranton, Wilkes-Barre,
Connelsville and a hundred other cities and towns, are better governed
now than they were before Slav, Latin and Jew came to live in their
Patches and Ghettos. This is true in spite of our having tried to
corrupt these new citizens from the very hour when they received their
political rights, and that when they had no rights, we treated them with
neglect and scorn.
The mayor of Greensburg, Pa., a man of the newer and better type of
administrators, whose territory is completely environed by the coke
regions and has an almost totally foreign population--says:
"They make reliable citizens. They can be trusted absolutely. Their
worst enemy is drink; but when a foreigner comes before me and is fined,
if he has no money and I let him go home, he will come the next day to
pay his fine even if he lives ten miles from town. Yet in spite of the
fact that the 'Hunkey' and the 'Dago' have helped build up Greensburg,
and have enriched its citizens, they are still held in contempt by the
majority of its people."
This same official told me that a few years ago when the Italians
celebrated their Independence Day, the _High School boys_ of that city
threw decayed vegetables at them and their national flag.
Without the slightest reserve I can say this: Wherever an enlightened
official, like this mayor, or teachers of the public schools, ministers
of the Gospel and business men, have come in real contact with the new
immigrant, their verdict was entirely different from that of Mr. Edwards
and many of the professional writers upon the problem which the
foreigner represents.
There are some places in the United States where I have found the
immigrant a menace, and one of them is in Pittston, Pa. There the
Italian is really bad; there he is an Anarchist and a murderer. But in
Pittston I discovered the really bad American, an Anarchist and a
murderer; although he may be the owner of some of the mines or a high
official in the town. In that city, every law which governs mining has
been openly violated, and there is at least one mine in the place which
is nothing but a deep hell-hole and is known as such by the men
compelled to work in it. It is a mine in which anything may be had for a
bribe and anything may be done without fear of punishment. In one of the
last communal elections, the candidate for its highest office kept open
house, with beer and "booze" in one of the miners' shacks; young boys,
not out of their teens, were allowed to drink to intoxication, and the
candidate already mentioned was not an Italian or a Slav or a Jew; but
an American, unto the tenth generation and a member of a Protestant
church.
I do not rejoice in writing this or in telling it as I have had to tell
it in the towns affected, and to the very men who have thus offended.
It is painful to me, because, after all, I do not feel myself so closely
identified with the immigrant as with the American. While my sympathies
are with the immigrant, they are much more with this, my country, and
with that circle of the native born, whose ideals, whose hopes and whose
aspirations have become mine.
I am not greatly concerned with immigration, per se; that is a subject
for the economist, which I am not. It is for him, if he is skilled
enough, to know whether we can afford to keep our gates open to the
millions who come, or when and to whom to close them.
Narrowly, or perhaps selfishly, I am concerned for those who are here;
that they be treated justly, with due appreciation of their worth, and
that they may see that best in the American which has bound me to him,
to his land and to its history; to its best men living, and to those of
its dead who left a great legacy, too great to be squandered by a
prodigal generation.
Knowing how great this legacy is, and yet may be for the blessing of
mankind, I am pleading for this new immigrant. If we care at all for
that struggling, striving mass of men, unblessed as yet by those gifts
of Heaven which have blessed us, let us prove to these people of all
kindreds and races and nations, that our God is the Lord, that His law
is our law and that all men are our brothers.
XXIV
FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS
While passing through a pleasure park in one of the European capitals I
met, quite by accident, my fellow passenger on the Italian steamer, the
Puritan rebel; she who smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails, was divorced
and had gone to the Old World in search of a more congenial moral
atmosphere and a husband with braid and buttons. Now she was drinking
the cup of unrestrained pleasure, and having nearly drained it, it was
beginning to taste bitter. Officers and attachés, Grand Opera, frivolous
plays and care-free crowds, were beginning to pall upon her and she was
unmistakably homesick; although she did not confess to that last fact.
"I suppose," she said, "you can't get rid of Puritanism, when once it
gets into your blood. It's an hereditary disease."
"And it is contagious," I added.
"I thought," she continued, "that at home we were small and narrow and
that over here I should find a larger freedom; but you can't turn around
here, without finding the bars up--racially, religiously, socially and
politically. The only unobstructed passage is the way to Hell."
Hers were large, black, dreamy eyes and the shadows of disappointment
passed over them. Then, to shake off the gripping seriousness from her
mood, she said, with a forced smile: "I am going to see the Merry Widow
to-night with my Captain. They are both inane. Meeting you has made me
blue, I fear; you remind me of my father."
She said this reproachfully, I thought; although she added: "Let us sit
down and talk things over. My daughter and the maid are listening to the
music and I have nothing to do until my Captain comes to meet me."
"Now please listen to me," I said when we were seated. "I was born over
here, right in this city. My playground was this very park. I have
tasted the best this city can offer a boy, as well as its worst.
"Listen," I said again; for her eyes wandered to the gay crowds. "I also
know your home city, and I wouldn't give one block in Hartford, Conn.,
not speaking from the commercial standpoint, for this whole magnificent
city, with its Cathedral, its Grand Opera, its royal castle, its
officers and its Merry Widow. Do you ask why? Just watch this crowd and
let me interpret it to you. Those boys now passing are Bohemians,
apprentices; and they are talking Czechish to make themselves obnoxious
to the Germans whom they hate and who hate them, more than your
forefathers hated the devil.
"Do you see that Bosnian? Notice his smile as he sells a jack-knife to
the Austrian soldier. His smile would be more genuine if he could knife
this detested 'Schwab,' his enemy and the conquerer of his country.
"Those men with the needle-pointed moustaches are Magyars, and they hate
the Slavs and Germans and every one else who will not speak their
language.
"The officers with the red fez are Turks, as you know; just now they
despise everything Austrian, and not without reason.
"The picturesque nurse maids, wheeling the babies, do not have those
soldiers with them to protect Austria's 'infant industries'; they are
Slovaks, aliens of the aliens, and the unprotected prey of the soldiers.
The Jews here add to the chaos; for all these races hate them and they
reciprocate in kind."
"We have all these people in Hartford! What of it?" My companion
impatiently interrupted my explanations.
"This," I replied. "These people have lived for many hundreds of years,
in chaos and confusion. Each in his little world, hemmed in by the pride
of his race or the hate of other people. Each day the barriers grow
taller and the hate grows stronger.
"I lived in it for a good many years, and it is an awfully little world
one is locked into; yet it is as big and terrible as Hell. That being
branded by the marks of your race, by the speech your ancestors have
bequeathed you, by your blood or your religion, and isolated as if you
were a leper, while your heart yearns for the larger fellowships--all
that I have felt from my youth."
"Haven't you felt it in America, too?"
"Yes; but with a difference, a tremendous difference. There they may
shut one from the social contact, but there remain the public schools,
the libraries, the churches and settlements. And what schools you have
in Hartford! I have been in schoolrooms there, in the first grade, where
90% of the children were of alien birth, and at a glance I knew their
nationality.
"Italians, miniature old men and women, although scarcely seven years of
age.
"Serious, little black-eyed Jews, with the burden of ages upon their
bent backs.
"Polish boys and girls, with small foreheads, as if some tyrant had
trampled upon their heads.
"Armenians, sad-looking, dark-skinned creatures, haunted by the
remembrance of their village street, red from the blood of the slain.
"Syrian children, out of the very village in whose meadows the angels
sang when Christ was born; but who have never known either peace or good
will.
"I went to the second and third grades, and there it seemed as if the
hand of a good angel had already passed over those marked and marred
faces; I could almost hear the voice of the All-Father saying:
"'I will blot out the transgressions which have been transgressed
against you.'
"They looked like children who were beginning to live the real life of
the child in a really human world, and were having a chance to grow into
the human likeness.
"I have been to your High School, and there the marks were all but
obliterated; there was 'neither Jew nor Greek, neither Roman nor
Barbarian'; they were all a new people."
Now, my Puritan rebel was listening attentively enough; so I continued:
"In America, something happens which cannot happen here. Over there, the
fiber, the tissue, that mysterious fluid which we call life or soul, the
very nerve cells change, under the benign influences of the heritage
left by your fathers; that heritage which you despise--you"--I repeated,
and I said it angrily; "you, who expatriate yourself for the sheen of
braid and buttons, for Grand Opera and Viennese waltzes! You expatriate
yourself
[Illustration: SLAVIC WOMEN
THE ONE WHO STAID AT HOME
THE ONE WHO EMIGRATED]
from a country where there is more idealism to the square inch than in
all this country, in spite of its statuary, its music and its
aristocracy.
"I'd rather live in Connecticut, the wife of a humble artisan, than
here, the 'consort' of a Count or Duke."
"You talk exactly like my father," she repeated.
"Do I? I'm glad of it. I told you that Puritanism is contagious. Maybe I
caught it from your father, and if I were sure that I have caught it, I
would be sure of more moral fiber than you will get here, if you stay a
hundred years.
"That Puritanism which you despise will make cosmos out of chaos; for in
spite of its narrowness, there is in it the passion for humanity. It
cries for justice, for freedom, for equality, even if it too often
burdens itself with theological dogmas hard to understand and harder to
believe.
"After all, the best thing in your country is, not that you give the
weaker a chance to grow strong, and the broken the blessing of
healing--the best of it is, that those of us who are just what we are,
have a chance to help in the doing. It's the work that a man or woman
can do over there that counts.
"Yes, go back, crawl back, if necessary, to sober Connecticut; to its
pure women and its undemonstrative men, who do not make meaningless
compliments, after the fashion of your Captain; but who will at least
think no evil of you and who will treat you with real courtesy, when
there is need of courteous action.
"You want art? You fear you will miss it? They are doing something worth
while at home, in bronze and marble; but they are doing more wonderful
things in human flesh and spirit.
"I have seen wretched Italian children who came from where they make
little fairies out of Carrara marble, yet they were crooked without and
within; and I have seen them grow tall and beautiful and pure, by the
grace of God and the passion of some noble woman. That, after all, is
the supreme art.
"Music? You can have Grand Opera in New York composed of all the stars
in the operatic firmament; yet I have heard music, sweeter, better and
truer, sung by children in the Settlements.
"I have seen a Christmas at Hull House, in Chicago, which surpassed any
Grand Opera. I am sure if angels come down to earth and care for our
mundane pleasures, they must have struggled for a front seat there.
"Fifty children of nearly all the races under Heaven sang the songs of
their home-land, all the way from those they used to sing under the dark
pines of Norway's farthest crag, down to those sung by Sicilian
children beneath the palms of their ever sunny land.
"Together they sang those Heaven-born prophecies of 'Peace on earth,
good will to men'; and as I heard the blended voices of Jews, Catholics,
and Protestants, Greeks, Italians and Syrians, I felt that the ancient
prophecies are being fulfilled, at least in spots, on our then unknown
continent.
"Go home. Learn to find pleasure in that classic art of making home.
Learn how to find joy in giving children a chance to live and laugh, to
look towards manhood and womanhood from a mountain top and not from a
cage. Catch the rhythm of that new poetry which is now in the making;
which speaks in its sonnets of justice, in its epics of war against all
human wrong and in its lyrics of a sublimer and a larger love."
"There comes my Captain!" said my victim, with a sigh of relief; "and I
must go."
Yes, there he stood; all braid and buttons, or just braid and buttons, a
waxed moustache, a waxen smile and clicking spurs.
Gracefully he bowed as he offered his arm, in such a charming manner as
could not be easily reproduced by any mere American. Thus they left me
to my solemn musings, while the living tide swept by me, each drop in
the great current antagonistic to the other. Unbidden there arose before
me the ship, laden by human freight, leaving America, carrying
representatives of these same races and nationalities alien and hostile
to each other: Slavs and Magyars, arch foes of centuries' standing;
Northern and Southern Italians, looking with scorn at one another; Jews
and Gentiles, Greeks and Bulgarians, Albanians and Montenegrins.
All of them had come out of the chaos wrought by ages of hate and
centuries of warfare. But in America, many of them had learned to live
together without scorn on the lip or hand on the sword-hilt.
The walls which separated them were weakened, if not broken down, and
like blind men they felt for one another in the dark; sometimes missing
the larger brotherhood, but often finding it.
The Pentecost of which prophets and seers have dreamt, which is to
repair the ruin wrought in the human family by the building of its
towers of Babel, cannot be so far away. The cosmos may yet come out of
the chaos, and there is no spot of earth on which this creative act can
be performed as well as in our America.
The land is vast enough and rich enough; no barrier of language divides
the East from the West; the North and the South are almost one, after an
internecine war; and in spite of our melting of metals and slaughter of
cattle and growing of corn--in spite of souls made hard and unresponsive
to anything but money--like the
[Illustration: GENERAL AND MRS. RICIOTTO GARIBALDI AT THE FOOT OF HIS
FATHER'S MONUMENT IN ROME
"It is just like you Americans--you go to work to make your dreams come
true."]
cash register we have invented; in spite of my Puritan rebel and her
numerous company--in spite of all that, our land is still full of
dreamers of dreams, who yet are awake and practical enough to make their
dreams come true.
"It is just like you Americans," said General Riciotto Garibaldi, to my
"boys," as they stood together at the foot of his father's monument in
Rome; while he listened to the story of their journeyings in the
immigrants' land, living in their huts in Hungary, Poland and Italy,
learning their language and their ways, that they may know how to
minister to their needs over here, and bind us to them and them to us.
"It is just like you Americans. We Italians think about those things and
make poetry; you go to work at a great dream to make it true."
My faith in the dreams of the great dreamers has never wavered. I knew
that the prophet's vision was not a _Fata Morgana_, and that the words
of the Son of Man came straight from the fountain of truth. Believing in
them and believing in American manhood and womanhood, in their altruism
and in their faith, and believing in the essential humanity of our
crowding alien host--I believe that cosmos is being created and that
chaos will disappear.
Finally, what we teach the immigrant by precept or by example, he will
become. He will bequeath our virtues or our vices, not only to the next
generation which will spring with virgin strength from his loins; but
through thousands of invisible channels, he will send these blessings or
curses to the ends of the earth.
The issues of the Kingdom of God in this generation are with America.
APPENDIX I
CLASSIFICATION OF THE NEW IMMIGRANT GROUPS
The new Immigrant groups which are more difficult to classify according
to race, nationality and religion:
_The Slavs_
I. Western Slavs
_Nationality_
_Name_ _or political division_ _Religion_
Bohemian The Kingdom of Bohemia Roman Catholic
or Czech a province of Austria Protestant
Moravians Moravia Roman Catholic
a province of Austria Protestant
Poles Poland Roman Catholic
divided by the European
powers into
The Russian province of
Poland
The German province of
Posen
The Austrian province of
Galicia
Slovaks A number of districts in Roman Catholic
Hungary chiefly in and Protestant
near the Carpathians
Wends Settlements in Germany, Roman Catholic
Prussia and Saxony Protestant
2. Eastern Slavs
Russians Russia Greek Orthodox
{Little Russians Southern Russia Greek Orthodox
{Ruthenians Galicia and
{Russniaks Hungary Greek Catholic
3. Southern Slavs
Servians The Kingdom of Servia Greek Orthodox
some districts in
Southern Hungary Greek Orthodox
Croatians Croatia Roman Catholic
a province of Hungary and
Greek Orthodox
Montenegrins Montenegro Greek Orthodox
an independent principality
Bosnians Bosnia and Herzegovina Greek Orthodox
and Provinces of Austria Roman Catholic
Herzogovinians Mohammedan
Dalmatians Dalmatia Greek Orthodox
a province of Austria Roman Catholic
Slovenes Carinthia Roman Catholic
or Griners Carnolia Protestant
Provinces of Austria
Bulgarians Czardom of Bulgaria Greek Orthodox
Districts in Southern
Hungary
_Eastern European Groups_
_Non-Slavic_
Magyars Kingdom of Hungary Roman Catholic
and Protestant
Finns Finland Protestant
a semi-independent
province of Russia
Roumanian Kingdom of Roumania Greek Orthodox
Roman Catholic
Lithuanians District in Russia Roman Catholic
and Protestant
Greeks Kingdom of Greece Greek Orthodox
Albanians Albania Greek Orthodox
a province of Roman Catholic
Turkey and
Mohammedan
_Groups from the Ottoman Empire_
Armenians Asia Minor Armenian Catholic Church
Gregorian Church
Protestant
Syrians Syria {Jacobite
a province of Syrian church {Maronite
Turkey {Ancient Syrian
(Roman Catholic)
APPENDIX II
NET IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES
1899-1908
There is much misapprehension in the popular mind, both as to the number
of immigrants arriving in the United States, and those remaining for
permanent residence.
Until 1907, all aliens arriving were enumerated; but of those departing,
no record was kept.
The Commissioner General of Immigration arrived at the figures of net
immigration given below, by estimating the departures according to
figures obtained during four months in 1907, when the returning tide of
immigration was normal.
The year 1908 shows an abnormally small increase, due to the industrial
depression in that year, when the returning tide of immigration was very
strong. The following tables show that a large number return every year,
and I am inclined to believe that the estimated figures of the net
increase are too high, and that the permanent increase of the
foreign-born population cannot be calculated from this insufficient
data.
The net gain in our foreign born population in the last ten years is
estimated as 5,240,200 which is 68% of the total immigration.
==========================================================================
Ratio
estimated
net
Alien arrivals. immigration
-------------------------------- bears to
Accepted Other Total Total alien Net accepted
Year. immigration alien alien departures immigration immigration
figures. arrivals. arrivals. estimated. estimated. figure.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1899 311,715 [7]45,000 356,715 172,837 183,878 59 per cent.
1900 448,572 65,635 514,207 206,351 307,856 69 "
1901 487,918 74,950 562,868 209,318 353,550 72 "
1902 648,743 82,055 730,798 220,103 510,695 79 "
1903 857,046 64,269 921,315 247,559 673,756 79 "
1904 812,870 27,844 840,714 332,019 508,695 63 "
1905 1,026,499 33,256 1,059,755 385,111 674,644 66 "
1906 1,100,735 65,618 1,166,353 356,257 810,096 74 "
1907 1,285,349 153,120 1,433,469 431,306 1,007,163 78 "
1908 782,870 141,825 924,695 [8]714,828 [8]209,867 27 "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 7,762,317 753,572 8,510,889 3,275,689 5,240,200
==========================================================================
APPENDIX III
INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION AND IMMIGRATION
The following table, giving the number of immigrant aliens admitted from
June 30, 1907 to June 30, 1908, is of special interest, because it shows
marked decrease during that period of industrial depression.
The figures are from the report of the Commissioner General of
Immigration.
The increase in the number of those from Roumania is probably in Jewish
immigration, following a period of renewed anti-Semitic disorders.
Should a change occur in the political status of the Russian Jews, a
large decrease of that group of immigrants may be expected. While it is
not likely to occur soon, Jewish immigration will also be retarded by
the fact that the economic conditions in the Russian empire are growing
better.
The greatest decrease may be expected from Austria-Hungary, where
drastic emigration laws have been passed, and are rigorously enforced;
especially against the Slavs, whose withdrawal in large numbers has
imperilled agricultural and industrial enterprises in Hungary.
IMMIGRANT ALIENS ADMITTED, FISCAL YEARS ENDED JUNE 30, 1907 AND 1908,
SHOWING INCREASE AND DECREASE FOR EACH COUNTRY.
-------------------------------------+----------+---------+------------
| | |Increase (+)
Country of last permanent residence. | 1907. | 1908. | or
| | |decrease (-)
-------------------------------------+----------+---------+------------
Austria-Hungary | 338,452 | 168,509 | -169,943
Belgium | 6,396 | 4,162 | - 2,234
Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro | 11,359 | 10,827 | - 532
Denmark | 7,243 | 4,954 | - 2,289
France, including Corsica | 9,731 | 8,788 | - 943
German Empire | 37,807 | 32,309 | - 5,498
Greece | 36,580 | 21,489 | - 15,091
Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia | 285,731 | 128,503 | -157,228
Netherlands | 6,637 | 5,946 | - 691
Norway | 22,133 | 12,412 | - 9,721
Portugal, including Cape Verde and | | |
Azore islands | 9,608 | 7,307 | - 2,301
Roumania | 4,384 | 5,228 | + 844
Russian Empire and Finland | 258,943 | 156,711 | -102,232
Spain, including Canary and | | |
Balearic islands | 5,784 | 3,899 | - 1,885
Sweden | 20,589 | 12,809 | - 7,780
Switzerland | 3,748 | 3,281 | - 467
Turkey in Europe | 20,767 | 11,290 | - 9,477
United Kingdom: | | |
England | 56,637 | 47,031 | - 9,606
Ireland | 34,530 | 30,556 | - 3,974
Scotland | 19,740 | 13,506 | - 6,234
Wales | 2,660 | 2,287 | - 373
Other Europe | 107 | 97 | - 10
|----------+---------+------------
Total Europe |1,199,566 | 691,901 | -509,353
-------------------------------------+----------+---------+------------
APPENDIX IV
SUGGESTED CHANGES IN IMMIGRATION LAWS
I. The examination of all emigrants at the port of embarkation.
_Objections_
(_a_) The maintenance of an expensive machinery which will be hard to
direct and control.
(_b_) The possible objections of the governments concerned.
(_c_) The prospective emigrant will necessarily have taken the most
serious steps; and rejection at the port of entry will not be a much
greater misfortune than rejection at the port of embarkation.
(_d_) That it will be practically impossible for political offenders to
leave their country.
II. "That in addition to the restriction imposed by the laws at present
in force, the head tax of four dollars now collected, should be
increased to ten."[9]
_Objection_
This would increase the number of immigrants who come here without their
families, and consequently would react upon the United States both
morally and financially.
_Suggestion_
That the ten dollar head tax be collected from adults, and that the
present tax of four dollars remain in force for children and possibly
for mothers.
III. "That each immigrant, unless he be a political refugee, should
bring with him not less than twenty-five dollars, in addition to the
amount required to pay transportation to the point where he expects to
find employment."
There is no valid objection to this demand--and the vast majority of
immigrants are able to meet it.
IV. "That immigrants between the ages of fourteen and fifty years should
be able to read a section of the Constitution of the United States,
either in our language, in their own language, or in the language of the
country from which they come."
_Objection_
The demand for such a test is not unreasonable, and is humane in that it
exempts the young and the aged; but it does not take account of the fact
that in most immigrant groups, the education of the woman has been
neglected--and that the enforcement of such a law would have the same
effect as that which relates to the increase in the head tax.
_Suggestion_
That the literacy test be not applied to the wives of immigrants.
INDEX
Albania, 300, 302, 305-307
Amerikansky Schtore, 108
Anarchist, 291, 322
Anti-Semitism, 286
Armenia, 351
Austria, 287
Bacon, Judge, 283
Baldwin, 302, 305-306, 309
Beisel, Conrad, 232
"Bessie," 170 ff.
Black Hand, 291
Calabria, 174
Campagna, 176
Cattero, Boche de, 248
Chautauqua, 305, 309
Chicago, 86, 87
Chorvat, Jan, 130 ff.
Columbus, 244
Connecticut, 200, 353
Connellsville, 192, 331, 341, 344
Constitution of United States, 323
Cracow, description of, 112;
hatred of Germany in, 113;
Jews in, 113;
political condition in, 114
Criminals, 322
Czechs, 212
Dalmatia, conditions in, 138;
government, 139;
America a blessing to, 147
Dowie, Charles A., 89
Edwards, R. H., 334, 336, 345
Ellis Island, 170
Emigrants, views of Americans, 82 ff.;
effect of return of, 72-75
Fansher, Guy J., 308
Gabriel, 256 ff.
Garibaldi, 357
"Gemeinschaft," 222
Greensburg, Pa., 344
Grose, Howard N., 317
Harrisburg, 343
Hartford, 315, 349, 351
Harvard, 264-266, 340
Hazleton, 353 ff.
Hungary, 260, 287, 295
Huss, 209
Hussite movement, 221
Introduction, letters of, 112
Italy, church of, 177;
dark side of emigration from, 173;
effect of emigration on Italy, 166;
on wages, 174;
on education, 175;
on religion, 176;
on women, 178;
on economic conditions, 179;
on purchase of land in, 174
Italians, bad, 195
Jamestown, 306-307, 310
Japanese question, 194
Jew, the, prevalence of persecution of, 260;
Jewish feeling of superiority, 261;
religious feeling alone does not account for prejudice, 262;
Prof. Shaler's comparison of Jewish and Gentile students, 264;
Jewish incapacities, 267;
the Orthodox, 272;
nowhere indigenous, 275;
characteristics, 279 ff.
Kisheneff, 277
Kopaniczari, meaning of word, 93;
savage appearance, 94;
view of fires, 94; of cameras, 95;
of medicine, 96
Kortia, 310
Lewis, H. S., 282
London County Council, 283
Lo Perfido, Luigi, 177
Luther, Martin, 210, 221
Matera, 177
_Mayflower, The_, 341
Medical science in Trenczin, 96, 97
Methodist Church, 176
Molocani, 187
Monastir, 307
Montenegro, Prince of, 153;
minister of exterior of, 152;
festivities of, 154;
emigration from, 155;
neighbours of, 156, 164;
legend of origin, 158;
national dress of, 160
Passover, Feast of, 262
Pennsylvania, 334, 342
Pietor, Ambrosius, 223
Pittston, Pa., 320, 345
Poland, best type of, 116;
in miniature, 117;
federation of, 122
Police, American, 49;
Indianapolis, 251;
Moscow, 250;
St. Petersburg, 250
Polish labourer in America, 65
Polish nobleman, a, 119
Polish peasantry, American influence on, 118
Postal Savings Bank, 193
Ragusa, guslar of, 142, 149 ff.;
returned emigrants in, 143;
and Coney Island, 144;
an evening in, 145
Roberts, Peter, 318
Rohacek, 134
Roosevelt, 297
Ross, Prof., 335
Rousseau, 241
Roy Sisters, the, 132
Ruskin, 241
Ruthenians, 78, 190, 207
Scanderberg, 306
Scharosh, 329, 339
Scranton, 163, 192, 200, 331, 341, 344
Shaler, Prof. N., 262, 266-267
Sicilians, 339
Skutari, 301, 305
Slavs, progress in social scale, 23;
slow to emigrate, 93;
lack of initiative, 118;
future of, 120;
characteristics of, 121, 205 ff.;
numerical supremacy, 203;
condition at home, 204;
dangers in Slavic emigration, 211;
industrial development impossible without them, 191;
late product of civilization, 215;
an Aryan people, 216;
Southern group of, 217;
Western group, Catholic, 218;
priests among, 220;
the reformation among, 221;
speech, 77;
conception of Slovaks, 190;
ideas of drink, 201
Slovak, slowness of, 125-127;
evangelistic effort among, 134;
returned emigrants, 128, 136
Sonnenschein, 275
Spalato, 185, 248
"Stary Kray," 24, 25
Stelzle, Charles, 317
Streator, Ill., 331-332, 338, 391
Syrian children, 352
Taft, President, 309
Taylor, Prof. Graham, 200, 284
Third class travel, 77, 79
Tolstoi, 241
Trenton, N. J., 195
Turk, M. H., 307-308
Vienna, University of, 296
Waag, the River, 124
Wages, 166
Wallachians, 78
Watchorn, R., 277
Welsh miners, 339
Wilkes-Barre, 192, 238, 331, 341, 344
Y. M. C. A., 258, 318, 323-324
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This, the regular text-book for the coming year is on the subject of
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The Immigrant
An Asset and a Liability
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The wide-spread attention focused on this theme makes "THE IMMIGRANT, An
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"Why do the immigrants come?"
"How do they come?"
"How are they treated at ports of entry?"
"What helps and what hindrances meet them?"
"Where do they go?"
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"Who is the padrone?"
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"What of the future?"
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] "The Neighbours," pp. 110-114.
[2] "The Jew in London," Russel-Lewis, pages 171-173.
[3] "Studies on American Social Conditions. Immigration." By Richard
Henry Edwards, p. 9.
[4] "Social Psychology," Ross, p. 140.
[5] Report of Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, pp.
182 and 185.
[6] Report of Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, p.
183.
[7] Estimated.
[8] Actual figures.
[9] Protect the Workman. John Mitchell, _The Outlook_, Sept. 11, 1909.
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