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Title: The Man Farthest Down
A Record of Observation and Study in Europe
Author: Booker T. Washington
Robert E. Park
Release Date: January 23, 2020 [EBook #61223]
Language: English
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THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
THE STORY OF THE NEGRO
WORKING WITH THE HANDS
CHARACTER BUILDING
MY LARGER EDUCATION
THE MAN
FARTHEST DOWN
A RECORD OF OBSERVATION AND
STUDY IN EUROPE
BY
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
ROBERT E. PARK
[Illustration: Logo]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1912
_Copyright, 1911, by_
THE OUTLOOK COMPANY
_Copyright, 1912, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Hunting the Man Farthest Down 3
II. The Man at the Bottom in London 21
III. From Petticoat Lane to Skibo Castle 37
IV. First Impression of Life and Labour on the Continent 53
V. Politics and Races 70
VI. Strikes and Farm Labour in Italy and Hungary 86
VII. Naples and the Land of the Emigrant 105
VIII. The Labourer and the Land in Sicily 124
IX. Women and the Wine Harvest in Sicily 148
X. The Church, the People and the Mafia 166
XI. Child Labour and the Sulphur Mines 192
XII. Fiume, Budapest and the Immigrant 217
XIII. Cracow and the Polish Jew 240
XIV. A Polish Village in the Mountains 264
XV. A Russian Border Village 276
XVI. The Women Who Work in Europe 296
XVII. The Organization of Country Life in Denmark 319
XVIII. Reconstructing the Life of the Labourer in London 341
XIX. John Burns and the Man Farthest Down in London 360
XX. The Future of the Man Farthest Down 377
The Man Farthest Down
CHAPTER I
HUNTING THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN
On the 20th of August, 1910, I sailed from New York City for Liverpool,
England. I had been given a leave of absence of two months from my work
at Tuskegee, on condition that I would spend that time in some way that
would give me recreation and rest.
Now I have found that about the only comfortable and satisfactory
way for me to rest is to find some new kind of work or occupation.
I determined therefore to carry out a plan I had long had in mind
of making myself acquainted with the condition of the poorer and
working classes in Europe, particularly in those regions from which an
ever-increasing number of immigrants are coming to our country each
year.
There have been a number of efforts made in recent years to divert a
portion of this immigration to the Southern States, and these efforts
have been the source of wide differences of opinion in the South. Some
people have contended that in these immigrants the Southern people
would eventually find a substitute for the Negro labourer and that in
this direction a solution for the race problem would be found. In some
parts of the South, in fact, the experiment of using immigrants from
Europe to take the place of the Negro on the sugar plantations and in
the cotton fields has been tried. Naturally I have been interested in
these experiments and as a consequence in the peoples with whom the
experiments have been tried.
The best way to get acquainted with an individual, or with a people,
according to my experience, is to visit them at their work and in their
homes, and in this way find out what is back of them.
So it was that I determined to make use of my stay in Europe to visit
the people in their homes, to talk with them at their work, and to find
out everything I could, not only in regard to their present situation,
but also in regard to their future prospects, opportunities, hopes, and
ambitions.
I was curious, for one thing, to learn why it was that so many of these
European people were leaving the countries in which they were born
and reared, in order to seek their fortunes in a new country and among
strangers in a distant part of the world, and to this question I think
I may say that I have found, in a general way, an answer. One general
fact, at any rate, in regard to this matter of emigration, I may,
perhaps, without attempting to go into details, mention here at the
outset. It is this:
The majority of the people who reach this country as immigrants from
Europe are, as one might expect, from the farming regions. They are
farm labourers or tenant farmers. Now there exists, as I discovered,
a very definite relation between the condition of agriculture and the
agricultural peoples in Europe and the extent of emigration to this
country. In other words, wherever in any part of Europe I found the
condition of agriculture and the situation of the farm labourers at
their worst, there I almost invariably found emigration at the highest.
On the other hand, wherever I visited a part of the country where
emigration had, in recent years, decreased, there I quite as invariably
found that the situation of the man on the soil had improved.
What interested me still more was the fact that this improvement had
been, to a very large extent, brought about through the influence of
schools. Agricultural education has stimulated an intensive culture of
the soil; this in turn has helped to multiply the number of small land
owners and stimulate the organization of agriculture; the resulting
prosperity has made itself felt not only in the country but in the
cities. For example, I found that where the people were prosperous and
contented in the country, there were fewer idle, discontented, starving
and criminal people in the cities. It is just as true of the poorer and
labouring classes in Europe as it is of the Negro in the South: that
most of the problems that arise in the cities have their roots in the
country.
Another matter in regard to which I hoped to get some first-hand
information during my stay abroad was what I may call the European,
as distinguished from the American, race problem. I knew that in the
south of Europe a number of races of widely different origin and
characteristics had been thrown together in close contact and in large
numbers, and I suspected that in this whirlpool of contending races
and classes I should find problems--race problems and educational
problems--different, to be sure, but quite as complicated, difficult
and interesting as in our own country.
While every race and every nation must solve its own problems in its
own way, and for that reason it is not possible to make any very
extended comparison between the race problems of Europe and of America,
there is, at least, a certain advantage in knowing that other nations
and other peoples have problems within their national life which are
quite as difficult and perplexing as our own.
We sometimes think and speak of the conditions existing in our own
country as if they were wholly exceptional and without parallel in
other parts of the world. My stay in Europe has convinced me that
we are not worse off in America in this respect than other peoples.
Even if they had the choice, I do not believe, for instance, that the
Southern people, black or white, would be willing to exchange their own
troubles, such as they are, for those of any other nation or group of
people in Europe or elsewhere.
There was another thing that made the trip I had outlined peculiarly
attractive to me: I believed that I would find in some parts of Europe
peoples who in respect to education, opportunity, and civilization
generally were much nearer the level of the masses of the Negro people
in the South than I was likely to find anywhere in America. I believed,
also, that if I went far enough and deep enough I should find even in
Europe great numbers of people who, in their homes, in their labour,
and in their manner of living, were little, if any, in advance of the
Negroes in the Southern States, and I wanted to study at first hand,
as far as I was able, the methods which European nations were using to
uplift the masses of the people who were at the bottom in the scale of
civilization.
In view of the rather elaborate plan I have sketched, I am certain that
some of my readers will wonder how I expected to be able, in the eight
weeks to which my vacation was limited, to cover all the ground or get
any definite or satisfactory notions in regard to the special matters
which interested me in the places I proposed to visit. It seems to me,
therefore, that I ought to say something, by way of explanation and
introduction, as to just how this journey was made and in regard to the
manner in which the impressions and facts which make up the remainder
of this book were obtained.
In the first place, it should be remembered that I was looking in all
the different countries I visited for one class of facts and seeking to
make myself familiar with merely one phase of life. During the whole
course of this journey, therefore, I kept myself religiously from the
temptation that was constantly offered to look at anything, however
important and interesting, that did not concern itself with the
purpose of my journey.
In the second place, I found that, while there were great differences
to be observed in the condition of the different peoples whom I
visited, there were, also, many broad similarities. I found, for example,
that what I learned in London was very useful and valuable to me, by
way of comparison, in studying and observing what I wanted to see in
Copenhagen and in Denmark. I found that the things I observed among the
peasants of Italy were a great help to me when I reached Austria and
was able to compare the conditions of the farming population in these
two different countries. The result was that the farther I went and
the more familiar I became with the general situation of the labouring
classes, the more I gained in insight and understanding of all that I
saw.
In fact I am convinced that if there is anything of special value in
the studies and observations that I have set down in this book it will
be found, not so much in the facts themselves, as in the attempt to
bring them together into a single point of view.
One of the first things I learned in Europe was the difficulty of
meeting the ordinary man and seeing and getting acquainted with the
matters of everyday life. I soon discovered that the most difficult
things to see are not the sights that every one goes to look at, but
the commonplace things that no one sees. In order to carry out the plan
I had in mind it was necessary for me to leave the ordinary beaten
track of European travel and to plunge into regions which have not been
charted and mapped, and where ordinary guides and guide-books are of
little or no avail.
As a matter of fact, I found less difficulty in this respect in London
than I did on the Continent, where it seemed to me that railways,
guides, guide-books, and the friends I met on the way were in a
conspiracy to compel me to see the things I did not want to see, and to
prevent me from seeing all the things that I did want to see.
For example, I had registered a firm resolution, before I sailed from
America, that if I could prevent it I would not enter a single palace,
museum, gallery, or cathedral. I succeeded partly in living up to this
resolution. When I reached Cracow in Poland, however, my fate overtook
me. I had heard a great deal of the ancient salt mines of Wieliczka. I
knew that in many places women were employed side by side with the men
in loading and carrying out the products of the mines, and for this
reason, and because I had myself at one time been a miner in America,
I was very anxious to see how the work was carried on in Europe.
The salt mines are about ten miles from Cracow, and in order to reach
them I found it necessary to take a carriage. At the entrance to the
mines I was surprised to find a large number of sightseers waiting
to go down in the shaft, and a dark suspicion crossed my mind that I
had made a mistake. My worst suspicions were confirmed when, after
descending some two or three hundred feet below the surface, I found
myself suddenly ushered into an ancient underground chapel. The place
was beautifully lighted and decorated with glistening figures which had
been hewn from solid blocks of salt by the pious miners who had worked
in these mines some three or four hundred years before.
From this chapel we again descended, through a dark, damp passageway,
into still another and then another large, elaborately decorated and
brilliantly lighted chapel. In one of these we ran upon a great crowd
of several hundred people carrying lighted torches and accompanied by
a brass band. They were peasants who were making an annual pilgrimage
to the mine for the purpose of visiting the underground chapels, which
have acquired a wide fame in the surrounding country.
For two or three hours we wandered on from one large chamber to
another, going deeper and deeper into the mine, but never coming, as
near as I could see, any nearer to the miners. Finally it began to dawn
upon me that, so far from being in an actual salt mine, I was really
in a sort of underground museum. There were chapels and monuments and
crowds of people in holiday attire; there were lights and music and
paper lanterns, but there was nothing that would in any way remind you
of the actual daily life of the miners that I had come there to see;
in fact, the only miners with whom I came in contact were those who
acted as guides or played in the band. It was all very strange and very
interesting, and there was, I learned, no possible means of escape.
From what I have already said I fear that some of my readers will feel,
as a great many people whom I met abroad did, that in my journey across
Europe I must have gained a very unfortunate and one-sided view of the
countries and the peoples I visited. It will seem to them, perhaps,
that I was looking for everything that was commonplace or bad in the
countries I visited, and avoiding everything that was extraordinary or
in any way worth looking at. My only excuse is that I was, in fact,
not looking for the best, but for the worst; I was hunting for the man
farthest down.
Most people who travel in Europe seem to me to be chiefly interested
in two sorts of things: They want to see what is old, and they want to
see what is dead. The regular routes of travel run through palaces,
museums, art galleries, ancient ruins, monuments, churches, and
graveyards.
I have never been greatly interested in the past, for the past is
something that you cannot change. I like the new, the unfinished and
the problematic. My experience is that the man who is interested in
living things must seek them in the grime and dirt of everyday life.
To be sure, the things one sees there are not always pleasant, but the
people one meets are interesting, and if they are sometimes among the
worst they are also frequently among the best people in the world. At
any rate, wherever there is struggle and effort there is life.
I have referred to the way in which I tried and, to a reasonable
extent, succeeded in confining my observations to a certain definite
point of view. Aside from this I had certain other advantages upon this
expedition in finding what I wanted to see and avoiding the things
I did not want to see, without which I certainly could neither have
covered the ground I did, nor have found my way to so many things that
had for me special and peculiar interest. Some years ago I made the
acquaintance, in Boston, of Dr. Robert E. Park, who has for some time
past assisted me in my work at Tuskegee. At the time I first met him
Doctor Park was interested in the movement to bring about a reform of
the conditions then existing in the Congo Free State in Africa; in
fact, he was at that time secretary of the Congo Reform Association,
and it was through his efforts to interest me in that movement that
I came to know him. He had a notion, as he explained to me, that the
conditions of the natives in the Congo, as well as in other parts
of Africa, could not be permanently improved only through a system
of education, somewhat similar to that at Hampton and Tuskegee. The
Congo Reform Association, as he explained, was engaged in a work of
destruction, but what interested him chiefly was what should be done in
the way of construction or reconstruction after the work of destruction
was completed. We had frequent conversations upon the subject, and it
was in this way that he finally became interested in the work that was
being done for the Negro in the Southern States. Since that time he has
spent the larger part of every year in the South, assisting me in my
work at Tuskegee and using the opportunity thus offered to study what
is called the Negro problem. The reason I make this statement here is
because Doctor Park was not only my companion in all of my trip through
Europe, but he also went to Europe some months in advance of me and
thus had an opportunity to study the situation and make it possible
for me to see more in a short space of time than I could otherwise
have been able to do. In this and in other ways he has been largely
responsible for what appears in this book.
For instance, it was Doctor Park who studied out the general plans
and details of our trip. He acted, also, not merely as a companion
but as a guide and interpreter. He assisted me also in getting hold
of the documents and literature in the different countries we visited
which enabled me to correct the impressions I had formed on the spot
and to supplement them with the facts and statistics in regard to the
conditions we had observed.
In several directions Doctor Park was peculiarly fitted for giving me
this sort of assistance. In the first place, during the years he had
been at Tuskegee he had become thoroughly acquainted with conditions in
the Southern States and, in the course of the journey of observation
and study on which he had accompanied me, we had become thoroughly
acquainted with each other, so that he understood not only what I
desired, but what it was important for me to see in Europe.
In the second place, shortly before I met him, Doctor Park had just
returned from four years of study in Europe. He was familiar with
much of the ground we intended to cover and at the same time spoke
the language which was of greatest use in most of the countries we
visited--namely, German.
Two people travelling together can, under any circumstances, see and
learn a great deal more than one. When it comes to travelling in a new
and unfamiliar country this is emphatically true. For this reason a
large part of what I saw and learned about Europe is due directly to
the assistance of Doctor Park. Our method of procedure was about as
follows: When we reached a city or other part of the country which we
wished to study we would usually start out together. I had a notebook
in which I jotted down on the spot what I saw that interested me, and
Doctor Park, who had had experience as a newspaper reporter, used his
eyes and ears. Then in the course of our long stretches of railway
travel we compared notes and comments and sifted, as thoroughly as we
were able, the facts and observations we had been able to gather. Then
as soon as we reached a large city I got hold of a stenographer and
dictated, as fully as I was able, the story of what we had seen and
learned. In doing this I used Doctor Park's observations, I suppose,
quite as much as I did my own. In fact, I do not believe I am able to
say now how much of what I have written is based upon my own personal
observations and what is based upon those of Doctor Park. Thus, it
should be remembered that although this book is written throughout
in the first person it contains the observations of two different
individuals.
In another direction Doctor Park has contributed to make this book what
it is. While I was dictating my own account of our adventures he would
usually spend the time hunting through the book stores and libraries
for any books or information which would throw any light on the matter
in which we were interested. The result was that we returned with
nearly a trunk-ful of books, papers, and letters which we had obtained
in different places and from different people we met. With these
documents Doctor Park then set to work to straighten out and complete
the matter that I had dictated, filling in and adding to what I had
written. The chapters which follow are the result.
I set out from America, as I have said, to find the man farthest down.
In a period of about six weeks I visited parts of England, Scotland,
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Sicily, Poland, and Denmark. I spent
some time among the poorer classes of London and in several cities in
Austria and Italy. I investigated, to a certain extent, the condition
of the agricultural populations in Sicily, in Bohemia, Poland, and
Denmark. I saw much that was sad and depressing, but I saw much, also,
that was hopeful and inspiring. Bad as conditions are in some places, I
do not think I visited any place where things are not better now than
they were some years ago.
I found also that the connection between Europe and America is much
closer and more intimate than I had imagined. I am sure that very few
persons in this country realize the extent to which America has touched
and influenced the masses of the people in Europe. I think it is safe
to say that no single influence which is to-day tending to change and
raise the condition of the working people in the agricultural regions
of southern Europe is greater than the constant stream of emigration
which is pouring out of Europe into America and back again into Europe.
It should be remembered that not only do large numbers of these people
emigrate to America, but many of these emigrants return and bring with
them not only money to buy lands, but new ideas, higher ambitions, and
a wider outlook on the world.
Everywhere that I went, even in the most distant parts of the country,
where as yet the people have been almost untouched by the influences of
modern civilization, I met men who spoke in broken English, but with
genuine enthusiasm, of America. Once, when I had made a half-day's
journey by rail and wagon into a distant village in Poland, in order
to see something of life in a primitive farming village, I was
enthusiastically welcomed at the country tavern by the proprietor and
two or three other persons, all of whom had lived for some time in
America and were able to speak a little English.
At another time, when I visited the sulphur mines in the mountains of
central Sicily, I was surprised and delighted to encounter, deep down
in one of these mines, several hundred feet below the surface, a man
with whom I was able to speak familiarly about the coal mines of West
Virginia, where each of us, at different times, had been employed in
mine labour.
There seemed to be no part of Europe so distant or so remote that
the legend of America had not penetrated to it; and the influence of
America, of American ideas, is certainly making itself felt in a very
definite way in the lowest strata of European civilization.
The thing that impressed me most, however, was the condition of the
labouring women of Europe. I do not know the statistics, but if I am
permitted to judge by what I saw I should say that three fourths of the
work on the farms, and a considerable part of the heavy work in the
cities of Europe, is performed by women. Not only that, but in the low
life of great cities, like London, it seems to me that the women suffer
more from the evil influences of slum life than the men. In short, if
I may put it that way, the man farthest down in Europe is woman. Women
have the narrowest outlook, do the hardest work, stand in greatest
need of education, and are farthest removed from influences which are
everywhere raising the level of life among the masses of the European
people.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN AT THE BOTTOM IN LONDON
The _Carmania_, the ship in which I had sailed, disembarked its
passengers late Saturday at Fishguard, off the coast of Wales. The
special train which sped us on to London reached the city early Sunday
morning, August 28.
As I drove from the railway station in the gray of the early morning
my attention was attracted by a strange, shapeless and disreputable
figure which slunk out of the shadow of a building and moved slowly
and dejectedly down the silent and empty street. In that quarter of
the city, and in comparison with the solid respectability and comfort
represented by the houses around him, the figure of this man seemed
grotesquely wretched. In fact, he struck me as the most lonely object
I had ever laid my eyes on. I watched him down the street as far as I
could see. He turned neither to the left nor to the right, but moved
slowly on, his head bent toward the ground, apparently looking for
something he did not hope to find. In the course of my journey across
Europe I saw much poverty, but I do not think I saw anything quite so
hopeless and wretched.
I had not been long in London before I learned that this man was a
type. It is said that there are ten thousand of these homeless and
houseless men and women in East London alone. They are, however, not
confined to any part of the city. They may be found in the fashionable
West End, lounging on the benches of St. James's Park, as well as
in the East End, where the masses of the labouring people live. The
Salvation Army has erected shelters for them in many of the poorer
parts of the city, where, for anything from two to eight cents, they
may get a room for the night, and sometimes a piece of bread and a
bowl of soup. Thousands of them are not able to compass the small sum
necessary to obtain even this minimum of food and comfort. These are
the outcasts and the rejected, the human waste of a great city. They
represent the man at the bottom in London.
Later, in the course of my wanderings about the city, I met many of
these hopeless and broken men. I saw them sitting, on sunshiny days,
not only men but women also, crumpled up on benches or stretched out on
the grass of the parks. I discovered them on rainy nights crouching
in doorways or huddled away in dark corners where an arch or a wall
protected them from the cold. I met them in the early morning hours,
before the city was awake, creeping along the Strand and digging
with their hands in the garbage-boxes; and again, late at night,
on the Thames Embankment, where hundreds of them sleep--when the
night watchman permits--on the benches or stretched out on the stone
pavements. After a time I learned to distinguish the same type under
the disguise of those street venders who stand on street corners and
sell collar-buttons, matches, and other trifles, stretching out their
hands in a pitiful sort of supplication to passers-by to buy their
wares.
Whenever I found an opportunity to do so, I talked with some of these
outcasts. Gradually, partly from themselves and partly from others,
I learned something of their histories. I found that it was usually
drink that had been the immediate cause of their downfall. But there
were always other and deeper causes. Most of them, it seemed to me, had
simply been borne down by the temptations and the fierce competition of
life in a great city. There comes a time when trade is dull; men who
had been accustomed to spend much money begin to spend less, and there
is no work to be had. At these times it is "the less efficient, the
less energetic, the less strong, the less young, the less regular, the
less temperate, or the less docile" who are crowded out. In this way
these men have lost their hold and sunk to the bottom.
I remember meeting one of these men late at night wandering along the
Thames Embankment. In the course of my conversation with him I asked
him, among other things, if he voted, and, if so, to what political
party he belonged.
He looked at me in amazement, and then he said he had never voted in
his life. It was his expression rather than his words that impressed
me. This expression told me how out of touch he was with the world
about him. He had, in fact, as I learned, no family, no home, friends,
trade; he belonged to no society; he had, so far as I could learn, no
views on life. In the very midst of this great city he was as solitary
as a hermit.
A few weeks later, in a little village in Galicia, I asked the same
question of a Polish peasant. "Oh, yes," he eagerly replied; "every one
votes here now."
Sixty years ago most of the peasants in this village to which I have
referred were serfs, and it was not until two years ago that the
Government gave them all the right to vote. Nevertheless, at the
present time the people in this village are represented by one of their
own number in the Imperial Parliament at Vienna. I stopped on my way
through the village at the little store kept by this man. I found two
young girls tending the store, his daughters, but the representative
himself was not at home.
I do not know why I should mention this circumstance here, except that
I was impressed by the contrast in the reply of these two men, the one
coming from a peasant in Poland and the other from an Englishman in
London.
It is generally said that the Negro represents in America the man
farthest down. In going to Europe I had in mind to compare the masses
of the Negro people of the Southern States with the masses in Europe
in something like the same stage of civilization. It would not be
difficult to compare the Negro in the South with the Polish peasant,
for example, because the masses of the Poles are, like the masses of
the Negroes, an agricultural people.
I know no class among the Negroes in America, however, with whom I
could compare the man at the bottom in England. Whatever one may say of
the Negro in America, he is not, as a rule, a beggar. It is very rarely
that any one sees a black hand stretched out for alms. One does see,
to be sure, too many idle and loafing Negroes standing on the street
corners and around the railway stations in the South, but the Negro is
not, as a rule, a degenerate. If he is at the bottom in America, it
is not because he has gone backward and sunk down, but because he has
never risen.
Another thing in regard to the Negro: although he is frequently poor,
he is never without hope and a certain joy in living. No hardship he
has yet encountered, either in slavery or in freedom, has robbed the
Negro of the desire to live. The race constantly grew and increased in
slavery, and it has considerably more than doubled in freedom. There
are some people among the members of my race who complain about the
hardships which the Negro suffers, but none of them yet, so far as I
know, has ever recommended "race suicide" as a solution of the race
problem.
I mention this because I found just the contrary to be the case in
England. I do not think that anything I saw or heard while I was in
England gave me a more poignant impression of the hardships of the
labouring man in England than the discovery that one of the most widely
read weekly papers in England, under the caption of "The White Slaves
of Morality," was making a public campaign in favour of reducing the
size of the families among the working classes.
The articles I refer to, which were written by a woman, were a
protest, on the one hand, against the clergy because they taught
that it would be immoral for women to refuse to have children, and,
on the other hand, against the physicians who withheld from these
women the knowledge by which they might be able to limit the size of
their families. These articles were followed from week to week by
letters purporting to come from working men and women telling of the
heartbreaking struggle they were making to support their children on
the wages they were able to earn.
What made these articles the more startling was the fact that, at
the very time when they were proposing to the English labourer what
ex-President Roosevelt has defined as "race suicide," thousands of
immigrants from the south of Europe were pouring into London every
year to take the places left vacant by the recession of the native
Anglo-Saxon.
On my previous visit to England I had been struck by what seemed to
me the cold and formal character of the English newspapers. It seemed
to me that they were wholly lacking in human interest. Upon my last
visit my opinion in regard to the London newspapers was considerably
altered. A careful study of the daily newspaper, I found, will repay
any one who wants to get an insight into social conditions in England.
I had not been in London more than a day or two, for example, when my
attention was attracted to the following item in one of the morning
papers:
STARVING FAMILY
CORONER'S APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC FOR AID
Telling of a terrible case of starvation in the Stoke Newington
Coroner's Court, Dr. Wynn Westcott, the coroner, asked the press
to bring a deserving case before the notice of the charitable
public.
He said that he had held an inquest upon a three-weeks-old baby
which had died of starvation. Its father had had no regular work
for three years, and only a little casual work in that time. There
was so little money that the mother, Mrs. Attewell, of White Hart
Street, Stoke Newington, was half starved too. She had only had a
crust of bread to sustain her on the day her child died, although
she had done nine and a half hours' washing to assist the home.
The home was perfectly clean, although practically destitute of
furniture. It was a most deserving case.
After reading this item I began studying the papers more closely, and I
was surprised at the frequency with which items of this kind occurred.
I learned that the Local Government Board, which is represented in the
English Cabinet by Mr. John Burns, has issued since 1871 an annual
report, or return, as it is called, of the cases in which, upon formal
investigation by a coroner's jury, it appears that the persons came to
their death in London as a result of starvation. I obtained a copy of
the return for 1908, in which are included the statistics on starvation
not merely for London but for the rest of England and Wales.
The forms issued to coroners were explicit. They provided that the
return should include only cases in which the jury found that death was
brought about by starvation or privation due to destitution. Cases in
which death was caused by cold, starvation, exposure, etc., unconnected
with destitution, were not entered in this return. Of the one hundred
and twenty-five cases of starvation reported, fifty-two occurred in
London. In eleven cases death was described as due to starvation in
conjunction with some other cause--that is to say, disease, drink,
exposure, or self-neglect. In eighty of the one hundred and twenty-five
cases no application was made for poor relief, or application was made
only when the deceased had been in a dying condition.
A few days after I had succeeded in getting this report my attention
was attracted one morning by the heading of a newspaper article: "How
the Poor Die." The article was an account of the finding of the body of
an unknown woman in a cellar in the basement of a house not very far
from where I was stopping.
"It appears," the article said, "that during the earlier part of the
morning a tenant of the building observed a woman sleeping in the
cellar, but no particular notice was taken of this because of the
fact that strangers frequently utilized the cellar for such purposes.
Mr. Oliver, one of the occupants of the building, had occasion to go
downstairs, and saw the woman. She was crouched in a corner and her
head was lying back. The police were called in and the services of
Doctor Barton were requisitioned.... Although the cause of death will
not be known until a post-mortem examination of the body has been made,
death, it is thought, was due to starvation. The woman was about six
feet in height, between forty and fifty years of age, and was in a very
emaciated condition and clad in very scanty attire."
Not infrequently, when in my public speeches I have made some reference
to the condition of the Negro in the South, certain members of my own
race in the North have objected because, they said, I did not paint
conditions in the South black enough. During my stay in England I had
the unusual experience of being criticised in the London newspapers
for the same reason, this time by an American white man. At the very
moment that this man attacked me because in my public interviews I
emphasized the opportunities rather than the wrongs of the Negro in the
South I had in my possession the document to which I have referred,
which gives the official history of fifty-two persons, one for every
week in the year, who had died in the city of London alone for want of
food.
I have never denied that the Negro in the South frequently meets with
wrong and injustice; but he does not starve. I do not think a single
case was ever heard of, in the South, where a Negro died from want of
food. In fact, unless because of sickness or some other reason he has
been unable to work, it is comparatively rare to find a Negro in an
almshouse.
It has not been my purpose in anything I have written to pass judgment
upon the people or the conditions that I have found in the countries
which I have visited. Criticism is an ungrateful task at best, and
one for which I am not well fitted. Neither shall I attempt to offer
any suggestions as to how conditions may be improved; in fact, I am
convinced from what I learned that the people on the ground understand
conditions much better than I possibly could, and in a later chapter
I hope to tell something of the great work that has been done in
England and elsewhere to raise the level of life and comfort among the
people who are at the bottom in the countries which I visited. What
I am anxious to do here is to emphasize some of the advantages which
it seems the members of my own race, and particularly those living in
the Southern States, have at the present time. It is not difficult to
discover the disadvantages under which the Negroes in the South labour.
Every traveller who passes through the South sees the conditions
existing, and frequently returns to write books about them. There is
danger, however, that the opportunities to which I have referred will
be overlooked or not fully appreciated by the members of my race until
it is too late.
One direction in which the Negro in the South has an advantage is in
the matter of labour. One of the most pitiful things I saw in London,
Liverpool, and other English cities was the groups of idle men standing
about on the street corners, especially around the bar-rooms, because
they were not able to get work.
One day, as I was going along one of the main avenues of the city,
I noticed an unusually large crowd standing in front of a street
organ which was drawn up at the side of the pavement. Pausing to see
what there was about this organ that attracted so much attention and
interest, I found that the man who owned this instrument was using it
as a method of advertising his poverty.
All over the front of the organ were plastered papers and documents
of various kinds. On one side there was a list of advertisements cut
from the "Want" columns of the daily newspapers. Attached to this was a
statement that these were some of the places that the man had visited
the day before in search of work, which he was not able to find. On the
other side of the organ were attached six or seven pawn tickets, with
the statement that "these are some of the articles which my dear wife
pawned to get food for our children." This was followed by a pitiful
appeal for help. The pathetic thing about it was that the only persons
who stopped to look at these exhibits besides myself were a group of
hungry and disreputable-looking men who were evidently in just as
great want as the man who ground the organ. I watched those men. After
reading the signs they would look inquiringly at the other members of
the group and then relapse into the same stolid silence which I had
noticed so many times in the forlorn figures that filled the benches of
the parks.
It seemed to me that they both pitied and admired the man who had
conceived this novel way of advertising his misfortune. I have noticed
these same people in other cases where it seemed to me they looked with
something like envy upon a beggar who was blind or lame or had some
other interesting misfortune which enabled him to win the sympathy of
the public.
Of course the persons that I have attempted to describe do not
represent the labouring classes. They represent the man at the bottom,
who lives by begging or casual labour. It shows, nevertheless, how
bitter is the struggle for existence among the labouring class higher
up, that the class below, the class which lives in actual poverty, is
so large and so much in evidence.
While I was in London I received letters from a great many persons of
all classes and conditions. One of these was from a coloured man who
was born and raised in the South and was anxious to get back home. I am
tempted to quote some passages of his letter here, because they show
how conditions impressed a coloured man from the South who got closer
to them than I was able to. He had been living, he said, in London for
fourteen months without work.
"I have tried to apply for work," he continued. "They said they want
Englishmen. It seems to me that all Britain are against the Negro race.
Some say, 'Go back to your own country,' knowing if I had the means I
would fly to-morrow."
Perhaps I would do better to quote some passages from his letter
verbatim. He says:
I cannot get a passage; to be alone in London without any help or
funds, like a pin in a haystack, nothing but sorrow and distress.
Hearing Mr. B. T. Washington were in London I appeal to him in
the name of God Almighty if he can possibly help me with a ticket
to get across, because the lady that was kind enough to give me
a shelter is without fund herself; being a Christian woman she
gave me food for what she can afford. At night I have to sleep
in a house with a widow which has two children which has to make
her living by chopping wood, whom some day, does not earn enough
to buy a loaf of bread for her children. The winter is coming on
and I like to get home to shuck corn or to get to Maryland for a
oyster draggin. It is a long time since I had watermelon, pig's
feet and corn. Say, Mr. Washington, if you ever knew what a man in
a hole is I guess I am in a hole and the cover over. I can see the
pork chops and the corn bread and the hot biscuits calling me to
come over and get some and many a time I have tried but failed. I
can't reach them; the great Atlantic Ocean stop me and I remain
Your Obedient Servant,----
This letter from which I have given a few extracts is but one of many
which I received during my stay in London, not only from coloured but
from white Americans who had come to England to better their condition
or seek their fortune.
These letters served still further to impress me with the fact that
the masses of my own people in the South do not fully appreciate the
advantages which they have in living in a country where there is a
constant demand for labour of all kinds and where even poor people do
not starve.
If I were asked what I believed would be the greatest boon that could
be conferred upon the English labourer, I should say that it would be
for him to have the same opportunities for constant and steady work
that the Negro now has in the South. If I were asked what would be
the next greatest benefit that could be conferred upon the English
labourer, I should say that it would be to have schools in which every
class could learn to do some one thing well--to have, in other words,
the benefit of the kind of industrial education that we are seeking, in
some measure, to give to the Negro at the present time in the Southern
States.
CHAPTER III
FROM PETTICOAT LANE TO SKIBO CASTLE
The first thing about London that impressed me was its size; the second
was the wide division between the different elements in the population.
London is not only the largest city in the world; it is also the city
in which the segregation of the classes has gone farthest. The West
End, for example, is the home of the King and the Court. Here are the
Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, most of
the historical monuments, the art galleries, and nearly everything that
is interesting, refined, and beautiful in the lives of seven millions
of people who make up the inhabitants of the city.
If you take a cab at Trafalgar Square, however, and ride eastward down
the Strand through Fleet Street, where all the principal newspapers of
London are published, past the Bank of England, St. Paul's Cathedral,
and the interesting sights and scenes of the older part of the city,
you come, all of a sudden, into a very different region, the centre of
which is the famous Whitechapel.
The difference between the East End and the West End of London is
that East London has no monuments, no banks, no hotels, theatres, art
galleries; no history--nothing that is interesting and attractive but
its poverty and its problems. Everything else is drab and commonplace.
It is, however, a mistake, as I soon learned, to assume that East
London is a slum. It is, in fact, a city by itself, and a very
remarkable city, for it has, including what you may call its suburbs,
East Ham and West Ham, a population of something over two millions,
made up for the most part of hard-working, thrifty labouring people. It
has its dark places, also, but I visited several parts of London during
my stay in the city which were considerably worse in every respect than
anything I saw in the East End.
Nevertheless, it is said that more than one hundred thousand of the
people in this part of the city, in spite of all the efforts that have
been made to help them, are living on the verge of starvation. So poor
and so helpless are these people that it was, at one time, seriously
proposed to separate them from the rest of the population and set them
off in a city by themselves, where they could live and work entirely
under the direction of the state. It was proposed to put this hundred
thousand of the very poor under the direction and care of the state
because they were not able to take care of themselves, and because it
was declared that all the service which they rendered the community
could be performed by the remaining portion of the population in their
leisure moments, so that they were, in fact, not a help but a hindrance
to the life of the city as a whole.
I got my first view of one of the characteristic sights of the East
End life at Middlesex Street, or Petticoat Lane, as it was formerly
called. Petticoat Lane is in the centre of the Jewish quarter, and on
Sunday morning there is a famous market in this street. On both sides
of the thoroughfare, running northward from Whitechapel Road until they
lose themselves in some of the side streets, one sees a double line of
pushcarts, upon which every imaginable sort of ware, from wedding rings
to eels in jelly, is exposed for sale. On both sides of these carts
and in the middle of the street a motley throng of bargain-hunters are
pushing their way through the crowds, stopping to look over the curious
wares in the carts or to listen to the shrill cries of some hawker
selling painkiller or some other sort of magic cure-all.
Nearly all of the merchants are Jews, but the majority of their
customers belong to the tribes of the Gentiles. Among others I noticed
a class of professional customers. They were evidently artisans of some
sort or other who had come to pick out from the goods exposed for sale
a plane or a saw or some other sort of second-hand tool; there were
others searching for useful bits of old iron, bolts, brass, springs,
keys, and other things of that sort which they would be able to turn to
some use in their trades.
I spent an hour or more wandering through this street and the
neighbouring lane into which this petty pushcart traffic had
overflowed. Second-hand clothing, second-hand household articles, the
waste meats of the Saturday market, all kinds of wornout and cast-off
articles which had been fished out of the junk heaps of the city or
thrust out of the regular channels of trade, find here a ready market.
I think that the thing which impressed me most was not the poverty,
which was evident enough, but the sombre tone of the crowd and the
whole proceeding. It was not a happy crowd; there were no bright
colours, and very little laughter. It was an ill-dressed crowd, made
up of people who had long been accustomed to live, as it were, at
second-hand and in close relations with the pawnbroker.
In the Southern States it would be hard to find a coloured man who did
not make some change in his appearance on Sunday. The Negro labourer
is never so poor that he forgets to put on a clean collar or a bright
necktie or something out of the ordinary out of respect for the
Sabbath. In the midst of this busy, pushing throng it was hard for me
to remember that I was in England and that it was Sunday. Somehow or
other I had got a very different notion of the English Sabbath.
Petticoat Lane is in the midst of the "sweating" district, where most
of the cheap clothing in London is made. Through windows and open
doors I could see the pale faces of the garment-makers bent over their
work. There is much furniture made in this region, also, I understand.
Looking down into some of the cellars as I passed, I saw men working
at the lathes. Down at the end of the street was a bar-room, which was
doing a rushing business. The law in London is, as I understand, that
travellers may be served at a public bar on Sunday, but not others.
To be a traveller, a bona-fide traveller, you must have come from a
distance of at least three miles. There were a great many travellers in
Petticoat Lane on the Sunday morning that I was there.
This same morning I visited Bethnal Green, another and a quite
different quarter of the East End. There are a number of these
different quarters of the East End, like Stepney, Poplar, St. George's
in the East, and so forth. Each of these has its peculiar type of
population and its own peculiar conditions. Whitechapel is Jewish;
St. George's in the East is Jewish at one end and Irish at the other,
but Bethnal Green is English. For nearly half a mile along Bethnal
Green Road I found another Sunday market in full swing, and it was, if
anything, louder and more picturesque than the one in Petticoat Lane.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning; the housewives of Bethnal
Green were out on the street hunting bargains in meat and vegetables
for the Sunday dinner. One of the most interesting groups I passed was
crowded about a pushcart where three sturdy old women, shouting at the
top of their lungs, were reeling off bolt after bolt of cheap cotton
cloth to a crowd of women gathered about their cart.
At another point a man was "knocking down" at auction cheap cuts of
frozen beef from Australia at prices ranging from 4 to 8 cents a pound.
Another was selling fish, another crockery, and a third tinware, and so
through the whole list of household staples.
The market on Bethnal Green Road extends across a street called Brick
Lane and branches off again from that into other and narrower streets.
In one of these there is a market exclusively for birds, and another
for various sorts of fancy articles not of the first necessity. The
interesting thing about all this traffic was that, although no one
seemed to exercise any sort of control over it, somehow the different
classes of trade had managed to organize themselves so that all the
wares of one particular sort were displayed in one place and all the
wares of another sort in another, everything in regular and systematic
order. The streets were so busy and crowded that I wondered if there
were any people left in that part of the town to attend the churches.
One of the marvels of London is the number of handsome and stately
churches. One meets these beautiful edifices everywhere, not merely in
the West End, where there is wealth sufficient to build and support
them, but in the crowded streets of the business part of the city,
where there are no longer any people to attend them. Even in the
grimiest precincts of the East End, where all is dirt and squalor,
one is likely to come unexpectedly upon one of these beautiful old
churches, with its quiet churchyard and little space of green,
recalling the time when the region, which is now crowded with endless
rows of squalid city dwellings, was, perhaps, dotted with pleasant
country villages. These churches are beautiful, but as far as I could
see they were, for the most part, silent and empty. The masses of the
people enjoy the green spaces outside, but do not as a rule, I fear,
attend the services on the inside. They are too busy.
It is not because the churches are not making an effort to reach
the people that the masses do not go to them. One has only to read
the notices posted outside of any of the church buildings in regard
to night schools, lectures, men's clubs and women's clubs, and many
other organizations of various sorts, to know that there is much
earnestness and effort on the part of the churches to reach down and
help the people. The trouble seems to be that the people are not at the
same time reaching up to the church. It is one of the results of the
distance between the classes that rule and the classes that work. It is
too far from Whitechapel to St. James's Park. What Mr. Kipling says, in
another connection, seems to be true of London:
"The East is East, and the West is West,
And never these twain shall meet."
While on one side of Bethnal Green Road the hucksters were shouting
and the crowd was busy dickering and chaffering for food and clothes,
I noticed on the other side of the street a wayside preacher. I went
over and listened to what he had to say, and then I noted the effect of
his words upon his hearers. He had gathered about him perhaps a dozen
persons, most of them, however, seeming to be his own adherents who had
come out to the meeting merely to give him the benefit of their moral
support. The great mass of the people who passed up and down the street
did not pay the slightest attention to him. There was no doubt about
the earnestness and sincerity of the man, but as I listened to what he
had to say I could find in his words nothing that seemed to me to touch
in any direct or definite way the lives of the people about him. In
fact, I doubted whether the majority of them could really understand
what he was talking about.
Somewhat later, in another part of the city, I had an opportunity to
listen to another of these street preachers. In this case he was a
young man, apparently fresh from college, and he was making a very
genuine effort, as it seemed to me, to reach and influence in a
practical way the people whom the lights of the torches and the music
had attracted to the meeting. I observed that the people listened
respectfully to what he had to say, and I have no doubt they were
impressed, as I was, with his evident desire to help them. It was
only too evident, however, that he was speaking another language than
theirs; that, in fact, one might almost say he belonged to a different
race of people. The gulf between them was too great.
After listening to this man I thought I could understand in a way that
I had not understood before the great success which the Salvation
Army at one time had among the masses of the people of East London.
In its early days, at least, the Salvation Army was of the people; it
picked its preachers from the streets; it appealed to the masses it
was seeking to help for its support; in fact, it set the slums to work
to save itself. The Salvation Army is not so popular in East London, I
understand, as it used to be. One trouble with the Salvation Army, as
with much of the effort that has been made to help the people of East
London, is that the Salvation Army seeks to reach only those who are
already down; it does not attempt to deal with the larger and deeper
problem of saving those who have not yet fallen.
The problem of the man farthest down, whether he lives in America or
in Europe, and whether he be black or white, is, in my opinion, not
one of conversion merely, but of education as well. It is necessary,
in other words, to inspire the masses in the lower strata of life with
a disposition to live a sober, honest, and useful life, but it is
necessary also to give them an opportunity and a preparation to live
such a life after they have gained the disposition to do so.
The Negro in America, whatever his drawbacks in other directions,
is not indifferent to religious influences. The Negro is not only
naturally religious, but the religion he enjoys in America is his own
in a sense that is not true, it seems to me, of much of the religious
life and work among the people of East London.
The most powerful and influential organization among the Negroes in
America to-day is the Negro church, and the Negroes support their own
churches. They not only support the churches and the ministers, but
they support also a large number of schools and colleges in which their
children, and especially those who desire to be ministers, may get
their education. These little theological seminaries are frequently
poorly equipped and lacking in almost everything but good intentions;
they are generally, however, as good as the people are able to make
them. The Negro ministers in the backwoods districts of the South are
frequently rude and ignorant and sometimes immoral, but they have this
advantage, that they spring from and represent the people, and the
religion which they preach is a religion which has grown up in response
to the actual needs and feelings of the masses of the Negro people. In
other words, the religion of the Negro in America is on a sound basis,
because the Negro church has never got out of touch with the masses of
the Negro people.
After leaving East London on my first Sunday in England, I drove about
fifteen miles through the famous Epping Forest to Waltham Abbey, the
country seat of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, a grandson of Sir T. Fowell
Buxton, who succeeded Wilberforce as leader of the anti-slavery party
in parliament, and who framed the bill that finally resulted in the
emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies.
There is certainly no more beautiful country to look upon than rural
England. Flowering vines cover the humble cottage of the farm labourer
as well as the luxurious country seats of the landowners, and lend a
charm to everything the eye rests upon. I was all the more impressed
with the blooming freshness of the country because I had come out of
the stifling life of the crowded city. I learned, however, that rural
England has for a long time past been steadily losing its population.
From 1891 to 1900 it is said that the number of farm labourers in
England decreased 20 per cent., and it has been estimated that the
rural population of England and Wales has diminished something like
30 or 40 per cent. during the past century, at a time when the urban
population has multiplied itself many times over.
There are, of course, many reasons for this decrease in the
agricultural population. One is, that at the present time not more
than 15 per cent. of the land in England is farmed by the people who
own it. Thirty-eight thousand landowners hold four fifths of all the
agricultural land in England.
A few days after my visit to Sir Fowell Buxton at Waltham Abbey I went
into northern Scotland to visit Mr. Andrew Carnegie at Skibo Castle.
While I was there I had opportunity to get some sort of acquaintance
with farming conditions in that part of the world.
In Scotland the opportunities for the small farmer to obtain land
are even less than they are in England. Some years ago, it is said,
twenty-four persons in Scotland owned estates of more than 100,000
acres. The Duke of Sutherland owns a tract stretching, I was told,
clear across Scotland from coast to coast.
In no country in the world is so small a portion of the population
engaged in agriculture as is true in England. For instance, 68 per
cent. of the population of Hungary, 59 per cent. of the population of
Italy, 48 per cent. of the population of Denmark, 37.5 per cent. of the
population of the United States are engaged in agriculture. In England
and in Wales in 1901 only 8 per cent. were engaged in agriculture.
Not only is it true that a larger proportion of the population of
England than of other countries has removed from the country to the
city, but in England, also, the distance between the man in the city
and the man on the soil is greater than elsewhere. For example, in
Italy the distinction between the agricultural labourer and the
labourer in the city may be said hardly to exist; the man who, at one
part of the year, finds work in the city, is very likely to be found at
work at some other time of the year in the country.
In Germany also I noticed that a great many of the manufacturing
plants were located in the country, where the factory labourer had an
opportunity to cultivate a small patch of land. To the extent that he
has been able to raise his own food, the factory hand in Germany has
made himself independent of the manufacturers and the market.
In Hungary I was told that in harvest time the public works were
deserted and many of the factories were compelled to shut down, because
every one went away to the country to work in the fields.
Now, the thing that interested me in observing the vast dislocation of
the rural population of England, represented by this vast labouring
community of East London, was the extent to which the English
labourer, in moving from the country to the city, had lost his natural
independence.
In losing his hold upon the soil the English labourer has made himself
peculiarly dependent upon the organization of the society about him.
He can, for instance, neither build his own home nor raise his own
food. In the city he must pay a much larger rent than it would be
necessary for him to pay in the country. He must work more steadily in
order to live, and he has to depend upon some one else to give him the
opportunity to work. In this respect, although the English labourer is
probably better paid and better fed than any other labourer in Europe,
he is less protected from the effects of competition. He is more likely
to suffer from the lack of opportunity to work.
In the same way England as a whole is more dependent upon foreign
countries for the sale of its manufactured products and the purchase
of its food supply than is any other country in Europe. Thus it will be
found that most of the great questions which are now agitating England,
like most of the great questions which are agitating other countries
in Europe, are more or less directly concerned with the matter of
agriculture and the condition of the labourer on the land.
I said in the preceding chapter that one advantage that the Negro in
the South had was the opportunity to work for the asking. The Negro
in the South has opportunities in another direction that no other man
in his position has, outside of America: he has the opportunity to
get land. No one who has not visited Europe can understand what the
opportunity to get land means to a race that has so recently gained its
freedom.
No one who has not seen something of the hardships of the average
workingman in a great city like London can understand the privilege
that we in the Southern States have in living in the country districts,
where there is independence and a living for every man, and where we
have the opportunity to fix ourselves forever on the soil.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSION OF LIFE AND LABOUR ON THE CONTINENT
One clear, cold morning, about the first of September, I took a train
at Bonar Bridge, in the north of Scotland, southward bound. There was a
cold wind blowing, and Bonar Bridge is about the latitude, as I learned
from looking at my atlas, of northern Labrador--farther north, in fact,
than I had ever in my lifetime dreamed of going.
I spent the next four or five hours looking out of a car window across
the bleak, brown moors, studying the flocks of sheep and the little
thatch-roofed cottages clinging to the lonesome hillsides.
Three days later I was in the beautiful mountain region below Dresden,
on my way to Prague, the capital of Bohemia. In many ways conditions in
the farming regions of Bohemia are quite as primitive as they are among
the crofters of northern Scotland. There are, for example, a larger
number of small farmers owning their own land in Bohemia than there
are in Scotland, but the Scottish crofter, although he remains a tenant
on a large estate, has, at the present time, a more secure position
on the soil than the man who rents his land in Bohemia. In other
respects the Scotch Highlanders, whose country I had just left, and the
Czechs, whose country I was just entering, are, I should say, about as
different as one could well imagine.
Among other things I noticed that the farming people in this part of
the world do not live apart, scattered about in the open country, as
they do in Scotland, and as is the case everywhere in America. On
the contrary, the Bohemian farmers live huddled together in little
villages, in the centre of the surrounding fields, from which they
go out to their work in the morning and to which they return in the
evening.
These different manners of settling on the soil are one of the marks by
which the people in the north of Europe are distinguished from those in
the south. The northern people settle in widely scattered homesteads,
while the southern people invariably herd together in little villages,
and each individual becomes, to a great extent, dependent upon the
community and loses himself in the life about him. This accounts, in
large measure, for the difference in character of the northern and
southern people. In the north the people are more independent; in the
south they are more social. The northern people have more initiative;
they are natural pioneers. The southern people are more docile, and get
on better under the restraints and restrictions of city life. It is
said, also, that this explains why it is that the people who are now
coming to America from the south of Europe, although most of them come
from the land, do not go out into the country districts in America,
but prefer to live in the cities, or, as seems to be the case with the
Italians, colonize the suburbs of the great cities.
Another thing that interested me was the sight of women working on
the land. I had not gone far on my way south from Berlin before my
attention was attracted by the number of women in the fields. As I
proceeded southward, the number of these women labourers steadily
increased until they equalled and even outnumbered the men. One of
these I had an opportunity to see close at hand; she was coarsely clad,
barefoot, and carried a rake over her shoulder. I had seen pictures of
something like that before, but never the real thing.
Outside of Italy I have rarely seen men going barefoot either in the
country or in the city, but in southern Europe it seems to be the
custom among the working women, and I took it as an indication of the
lower position which women occupy among the people of southern Europe
as compared with the position that they occupy in America. I saw many
barefoot women later in the course of my journey, both in the field
and elsewhere. I confess, however, I was surprised to meet in Vienna,
Austria, as I did on several occasions while I was there, women walking
barefoot on the pavements in one of the most fashionable streets of
the city. One day, in speaking to a native Austrian, I expressed my
surprise at what I had seen.
"Oh, well," he replied, "they are Slovaks."
How vividly this reminded me of a parallel remark with which I was
familiar, "Oh, well, they are Negroes!"
It was the tone of this reply that caught my attention. It emphasized
what I soon discovered to be another distinguishing feature of life in
southern Europe. Everywhere I went in Austria and Hungary I found the
people divided according to the race to which they belonged. There was
one race at the top, another at the bottom, and then there were perhaps
two or three other races which occupied positions relatively higher
or lower in between. In most cases it was some section of the Slavic
race, of which there are some five or six different branches in the
Austrian Empire, which was at the bottom.
Several times, in my efforts to find out something about these
so-called "inferior people," I made inquires about them among their
more successful neighbours. In almost every case, no matter what race
it happened to be to which I referred, I received the same answer.
I was told that they were lazy and would not work; that they had no
initiative; that they were immoral and not fitted to govern themselves.
At the same time, I found them doing nearly all the really hard,
disagreeable, and ill-paid labour that was being done. Usually I found,
also, that with fewer opportunities than the people around them, they
were making progress.
I was frequently surprised at the bitterness between the races. I have
heard people talk more violently, but I do not think I have heard
any one say anything worse in regard to the Negro than some of the
statements that are made by members of one race in Austria in regard to
members of some other.
I reached the city of Prague late at night, and awoke next morning
in a world that was utterly new to me. It was not that Prague looked
so different from other European cities I had seen, but the language
sounded more strange than anything else I had ever heard. I do not
pretend to understand German, yet it seemed to me that there was
something familiar and friendly about that language as compared with
Czech.
The Czechs are but one of the seventeen races of Austria-Hungary, each
one of which, with the exception of the Jews, who are an exception to
everything, is seeking to preserve its own language, and, if possible,
compel all its neighbours to learn it. Preserving its own language is
not difficult in the country districts, where each race lives apart in
its own village and maintains its own peculiar customs and traditions.
It is more difficult in the large cities like Vienna and Budapest,
where the different nationalities come into intimate contact with each
other and with the larger European world.
There is a region in northeastern Hungary where in the course of a
day's ride one may pass through, one after another, villages inhabited
by as many as five different races--Ruthenians, Jews, Roumanians,
Hungarians, and Germans. A racial map of the Dual Empire shows
districts in which one race predominates, but these same districts
will very likely be dotted with villages in which the fragments of
other races still survive, some of them, like the Turks, so few in
number that they are not separately counted as part of the population.
Under these circumstances travel in this part of the world is made
interesting but not easy.
Fortunately, I had letters of introduction to Dr. Albert W. Clarke,
head of the Austrian branch of the American Board of Missions at
Prague, and he introduced me to some of his native assistants who
spoke English, and kindly assisted me in finding what I most desired
to see of the city and the people. Through him I had an opportunity
to get inside of some of the tenements in which European people live,
and to see some of the working people in their homes. I did not have
an opportunity to explore the parts of the city in which the very poor
people live; in fact, I was told that there was nothing in Prague that
corresponded to the slums of our English and American cities. There is
much poverty, but it is poverty of a self-respecting sort--not of those
who have been defeated and gone under, but of those who have never got up.
I found the average Bohemian workman living in two rooms and working
for wages considerably less than the same kind of labour would have
brought in England, and very much less than the same kind of labour
would have brought in America. There is, however, very little use in
comparing the wages that men earn unless you are able to compare all
the surrounding conditions.
During my stay in Prague I had an opportunity to see something close at
hand of the life of the farming population. Under the guidance of one
of Doctor Clarke's assistants I drove out one day to a little village
where there were a number of people who had come under the influence of
the American Mission in Prague, and where I was assured I should find a
welcome.
It was not, perhaps, the best place to get an idea of what is most
characteristic in Bohemian country life. I had hoped to see something
of the local customs of the country people, but, though it was a
holiday when I made my visit, I did not see a single peasant costume.
There are still many places in Bohemia, I understand, where the people
take pride in wearing the national costumes, and there are still many
parts of the Austrian Empire where relics of the older civilization
linger. Indeed, I heard of places where, it is said, the peasants
are still paying the old feudal dues; in other places the old unfree
condition of the peasants is still continued in the form of peonage,
as it may still be sometimes found in our Southern States. In this
case the peasants have got themselves into debt for land. They are
not allowed to work off this debt, and this serves as a pretence
for keeping them bound to the soil. But education and the growth
of manufacturing industries have banished the traces of the older
civilization from the greater part of Bohemia.
In the village which I visited, as in most of the farming villages
in this part of the world, the houses of the farmers stand in a row
quite close together on either side of the street. In the rear are the
quarters of the servants, the storehouses and the stables, the pig-stys
and the cow-stalls, all closely connected, so that it was often a
little uncertain to me where the quarters for the servants left off and
those for the animals began. In fact, in some places no very definite
distinction was made.
One of the most interesting places that I visited during my stay in
this village was a dairy farm which was conducted by a Jew. He was
evidently one of those of the lower or middle class--a type one hears
much of in Europe--who, with very little knowledge or skill in the
actual work of agriculture, have succeeded by their superior business
skill in getting possession of the land and reducing the peasant to a
position not much better than that of a serf. This man not only kept
a dairy farm but he operated two or three brickyards besides, and had
other extensive business interests in the village. Although he was
a man of wealth and intelligence, he had his dwelling in the midst
of a compound around which were grouped houses for his labourers,
cow-stalls, a wheelwright and blacksmith shop, places for pigs,
chickens, and dogs, the whole in a condition of indescribable disorder
and filth.
The greater part of the work on the farm seemed to be done by women,
most of whom were barefooted or wore wooden shoes. I do not think
I have seen any one wearing wooden shoes before since the days of
slavery. They had remained in my mind as the symbol of poverty and
degradation; but they are worn everywhere in country districts in
Europe. In fact, I remember in one instance, when I visited an
agricultural school, finding one of the teachers working in the garden
wearing wooden shoes. The people who worked on this farm all lived, as
far as I could see, in one little ill-smelling and filthy room. There
was no sign in the homes which I visited of those household industries
for which Hungarian peasants are noted, and which should help to
brighten and make comfortable the simplest home.
I believe there are few plantations in our Southern States where, even
in the small one-room cabins, one would not find the coloured people
living in more real comfort and more cleanliness than was the case
here. Even in the poorest Negro cabins in the South I have found
evidences that the floor was sometimes scrubbed, and usually there was
a white counterpane on the bed, or some evidence of an effort to be
tidy.
Prague is one of the most ancient cities in Europe. A thing that
impressed me with the antiquity of the town was the fact that before
the beginning of the Christian era there was a Jewish quarter in this
city. Prague is also one of the most modern cities in Europe. Within
a comparatively few years large manufacturing plants have multiplied
throughout the country. Bohemia makes, among other things, fezzes, and
sells them to Turkey; raises beans, and ships them to Boston.
What is most interesting is the fact that this progress has been, to a
very large extent, made possible through the education of the masses
of the people. The Bohemians are to-day among the best educated people
in Europe. For example, among the immigrants who come from Europe to
America, 24.2 per cent. over fourteen years of age are unable to read
and write. In the case of the German immigrant not more than 5.8 per
cent. are unable to read or write. In the case of the Bohemians the
percentage of illiteracy is only 3 per cent. There is only one class of
immigrants among whom the percentage of illiteracy is lower. Among the
Danish immigrants it is 0.8 per cent.
There is no part of the Austrian Empire where education is more
generally diffused or where the schools are so well adapted to the
actual needs of the people. In addition to the ordinary primary
schools and the gymnasia (which correspond to our high schools) there
are several higher institutes of technology which prepare students
for industry and commerce. Besides these state schools there are a
large number of industrial schools that are maintained by cities
or by private associations. Some of these are located in the small
towns and are closely connected with the local industries. Sometimes
they are organized by the members of the different trades and crafts
as a supplement to the apprentice system. For example, in a town
where the inhabitants are engaged in the clay industry, there will
be found schools which give practical courses in the making of vases
and crockery. In some of the larger towns commercial and industrial
instruction is given in "continuation schools." In these schools
girls who have learned needlework in the elementary schools will be
taught sewing, dressmaking, and embroidery and lace work. There are
also courses in which boys are prepared to work in the sugar-making,
brewing, watchmaking, and other manufacturing industries.
In the two institutes of technology in Prague, one of which is
for Bohemians and the other for Germans, courses are given which
prepare students to be engineers, chemists, machinists, architects,
bookkeepers, etc. In connection with these courses there are also
special departments where students are prepared to be master workmen
in such trades as bricklaying, carpentry, cabinet-making, and stone
masonry.
There is much in the life and history of the Bohemian people that is
especially interesting to a race or a people like the Negro, that
is itself struggling up to a higher and freer level of life and
civilization.
Up to 1848 the masses of the Bohemian people were held in a condition
of serfdom. Until 1867 they were not allowed to emigrate from the
country, and were thus held, as are the Russian peasants to-day, to a
certain degree, prisoners in their own country. Most of the land was in
the hands of the nobility, who were the descendants of foreigners who
came into the country when it was conquered, a century or more before.
Even to-day five families own 8 per cent. of all the land in the
kingdom, and one tenth of the population owns 36 per cent. of the area
of the country. The Emperor and the Catholic Church are also large
landowners.
One of the effects of this new education and the new life that has
come with it has been to make the land held in larger estates less
productive than that which is divided into smaller holdings and
cultivated by the men who own it.
It was interesting to me to learn that the Bohemians in their own
country suffer from some of the same disadvantages as the Negro in
the South. For example, the educational fund is divided between the
races--the Germans and the Czechs--just as the money for education is
divided in the South between the whites and the blacks, but, as is true
in the South, it is not divided equally between the races.
For example, in the city of Prague there is one gymnasium (school) to
every 62,000 Czech inhabitants, while the Germans have one gymnasium
for every 6,700 inhabitants. Of what are called the real-schools, in
which the education is more practical than that of the gymnasia, there
is one for every 62,000 Bohemian inhabitants, while the Germans have
one for every 10,000 inhabitants. For a number of years past, although
the Bohemians represent 70 per cent. of the population, they have
received only a little more than one half of the money appropriated
for secondary education, both in the gymnasia and the real-schools.
The salaries of teachers in the elementary schools range from $155 to
$400 per year; in the schools in which the German language is taught,
however, teachers receive an added bonus for their services.
To overcome their disadvantages in this direction the Czechs have
supplemented the work of the public schools by industrial schools,
which are maintained by the contributions of the people in the same way
that the Negroes in many parts of the South have supplemented the work
of the public schools in order to increase the terms of the school year
and to introduce industrial training of various sorts.
More than this, the masses of the people in Bohemia are limited and
restricted in all their movements in ways of which no one in America
who has not passed through the hands of the immigration inspectors at
Ellis Island has any comprehension. For example, the people of Austria
have had for a number of years freedom of conscience, and, in theory at
least, every one is allowed to worship according to his own inclination
and convictions. Nevertheless, it seems to be as much a crime in
Austria to say anything that could be construed as disrespectful to the
Catholic Church as it would be to insult the name of the Emperor. I
heard a story of a woman who ran a small store in which she was using
copies of a Catholic newspaper with which to wrap up articles which she
had sold to her customers. She was warned by the police that if she
continued to use this paper for that purpose she would be liable to
arrest. Afterward packages were found in her store which were wrapped
in this paper; she was arrested and the case was carried to the highest
court, but the sentence which had been imposed upon her stood, and she
was compelled to serve a term in prison as punishment for this offence.
It was only with the greatest difficulty, Doctor Clarke informed
me, that he succeeded in getting permission from the Government to
establish a branch of the Young Men's Christian Association in Prague.
I myself had some experience of these restrictions when I spoke before
an audience composed largely of young Bohemian workmen in the rooms of
this same Young Men's Christian Association. In order that I might be
permitted to make this address it was necessary to announce the subject
to the officers of the Government three days before I arrived in the
city, and at the meeting I had the unusual experience of having my
words taken down by a Government official who was present to see that I
did not say anything that would disturb the public peace.
Not knowing what else I could say to this audience that would interest
them, I told briefly the story of my own life and of the work that we
are trying to do for our students at Tuskegee. I told them also that
the institution (Hampton Institute) in which I had gained my education
had been established by the same American Board of Missions which was
responsible for the existence of the Young Men's Christian Association
in Bohemia.
In order that my hearers might understand what I said, it was necessary
for the secretary of the association, a Bohemian who spoke very good
English, to translate my words sentence by sentence. In spite of these
difficulties I do not think I ever spoke to an audience of labouring
people who were more intelligent or more appreciative. It was a great
pleasure and satisfaction to me to be able to speak to this audience.
I felt, as I think they did, that we had something in common which
others, perhaps, could not entirely understand, because each of us
belonged to a race which, however different in other respects, was the
same in this: that it was struggling upward.
CHAPTER V
POLITICS AND RACES
In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, I came in contact for the first time
with the advance guard, if I may use the expression, of a new race, the
Slavs. I say a new race, because although the Slavic peoples claim an
antiquity as great as that of any other race in Europe, the masses of
the race seem just now emerging from a condition of life more primitive
than that of almost any other people in Europe.
Many little things, not only what I saw with my own eyes, but what I
heard from others, gave me the impression, as I travelled southward,
that I was entering into a country where the masses of the people lived
a simpler and more primitive existence than any I had seen elsewhere in
Europe. I remember, for one thing, that I was one day startled to see,
in the neighbourhood of the mining regions of Bohemia, a half-dozen
women engaged in loading a coal barge--shovelling the coal into
wheelbarrows and wheeling them along a narrow plank from the coal wharf
to the ship alongside.
I was impressed, again, by the fact that several of the peoples
of the Austrian Empire--the Moravians and Ruthenians are an
illustration--still preserve their old tribal names. Certain other of
these peoples still keep not only the tribal names, but many of the old
tribal customs. Among most of the Slavic peoples, for example, custom
still gives to the marriage ceremony the character of barter and sale.
In fact, I found that in one of the large provincial towns in eastern
Hungary the old "matrimonial fairs" are still kept up. On a certain
day in each year hundreds of marriageable young women are brought down
to this fair by their parents, where they may be seen seated on their
trunks and surrounded by the cattle they expect to have for a dowry.
Naturally young men come from all the surrounding country to attend
this fair, and usually a lawyer sits out under a tree nearby prepared
to draw up the marriage contract. In some cases as many as forty
marriages are arranged in this way in a single day.
Divided into petty kingdoms or provinces, each speaking a separate
language, living for the most part in the country districts, and held
in some sort of political and economic subjection, sometimes by the
descendants of foreign conquerors, and sometimes, as in the case of
the Poles, by the nobility of their own race, the masses of the Slavic
peoples in southern Europe have lived for centuries out of touch with
the life of cities, and to a large extent out of touch with the world.
Compared, therefore, with the peoples of western Europe, who are living
in the centres of modern life and progress, the Slavic peoples are just
now on the horizon.
In the course of my travels through Austria and Hungary I think I met,
at one time or another, representatives of nearly every branch of the
Slavic race in the empire. In Bohemia I became acquainted, as I have
said, with the most progressive portion of the race, the Czechs. In
Galicia I saw something of the life of the Polish people, both in the
towns and in the country districts. Again, in Budapest and Vienna
I learned something of the condition of the labouring and peasant
classes, among whom the Slavic peoples are usually in the majority. At
Fiume, the port of Hungary, from which forty thousand emigrants sail
every year for the United States, I met and talked with Dalmatians,
Croatians, Slovenes, Ruthenians, and Serbs--representatives, in fact,
of almost every race in Hungary. In the plains of central Hungary, and
again in eastern Prussia, I saw gangs of wandering labourers, made up
of men and women who come to this part of the country from the Slavic
countries farther south and east to take part in the harvest on the
great estates.
During this time I became acquainted to some extent also with
representatives of almost every type of civilization, high and low,
among the peoples of southern Europe, from the Dalmatian herdsmen, who
lead a rude and semi-barbarous existence on the high, barren mountains
along the coast of the Adriatic, to the thrifty and energetic artisans
of Bohemia and the talented Polish nobility, who are said to be among
the most intellectual people in Europe.
I did not, among these classes I have mentioned, see the most primitive
people of the Slavic race, nor the type of the man of that race
farthest down. In fact, I have heard that in the mountain regions of
southern Galicia there are people who make their homes in holes in the
ground or herd together in little huts built of mud. I did not see,
either, as I should like to have seen, the life of those Slavic people
in southwestern Hungary who still hold their lands in common and live
together in patriarchal communities, several families beneath one
roof, under the rule of a "house father" and a "house mother," who are
elected annually to govern the community.
What little I did see of the life of the different branches of the race
gave me the impression, however, of a people of great possibilities,
who, coming late into the possession of modern ideas and modern
methods, were everywhere advancing, in some places rapidly and in
others more slowly, but always making progress.
One thing that has hindered the advancement of the Slavs has been
the difference in the languages spoken by the different branches of
the race. So great an obstacle is this difference of language that
some years ago, when a congress of all the Slavic peoples was held at
Prague, the representatives of the different branches of the race,
having no common tongue, were compelled to speak to each other in the
one language that they all professed to hate--namely, German.
Another thing that has hindered the progress of the Slavs has been
the inherited jealousies and the memories they cherish of ancient
injuries they have inflicted on one another in times past. In general,
it seems to be true of the races of Austria-Hungary that each race or
branch of the race hates and despises every other, and this hatred is
the more bitter the more closely they are associated. For example,
there is a long-standing feud between the Polish peasants and the
Polish nobility. This division is so great that the Polish peasants
have frequently sided against the Polish nobility in the contests
of the latter with the central government of Austria. However, this
sentiment of caste which separates the two classes of the Polish people
is nothing compared with the contempt with which every Pole, whether
he be peasant or noble, is said to feel for every Ruthenian, a people
with whom the Pole is very closely related by blood, and with whom he
has long been in close political association. On the other hand, the
Ruthenian in Galicia looks upon the Pole just as the Czech in Bohemia
looks upon his German neighbour: as his bitterest enemy. The two
peoples refuse to intermingle socially; they rarely intermarry; in many
cases they maintain separate schools, and are represented separately in
the Imperial Parliament, each race electing its own representatives.
But all are united in hating and despising the Jew, who, although he
claims for himself no separate part of the empire, and has no language
to distinguish himself from the other races about him, still clings as
tenaciously as any other portion of the population to his own racial
traditions and customs.
The Slavic peoples, otherwise divided by language and tradition, are
also divided by religion. People speaking the same language, and
sharing in other respects the same traditions, are frequently just
as widely separated by differences of religion as they could be by
differences of race. For example, among the southern Slavs the majority
of the Slovenes and the Croatians are Roman Catholics, others are
Protestants. On the other hand, the majority of the Serbs, their close
neighbours, are members of the Greek Orthodox Church, while others
are Mohammedans. So wide is the division between the Roman Catholic
and the Orthodox Slavs that in some cases members of the Eastern and
Western branches of the Church belonging to the same nationality wear
a different costume in order to emphasize the differences of religion
that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked.
In Galicia there are not only the Roman and Orthodox branches of the
Church, but there are also three or four other minor branches. One
of these, the Uniates, which is a compromise between the two and is
intended to be a sort of link between the Eastern and Western churches,
is now, it is said, just as distinct from both as any of the other
branches of the Church. In this region, which has been the battleground
of all the religions in Europe, religious distinctions play a much
more important rôle than they do elsewhere, because the masses of the
people have not yet forgotten the bitterness and the harshness of the
early struggles of the sects. The result is that religious differences
seem to have intensified rather than to have softened the racial
animosities.
In spite of the divisions and rivalries which exist, there seems to
be growing up, under the influence of the struggle against the other
and dominant races in the Empire, and as a result of the political
agitations to which this struggle has given rise, a sense of common
purpose and interest in the different branches of the Slavic race; a
sort of racial consciousness, as it is sometimes called, which seems to
be one of the conditions without which a race that is down is not able
to get the ambition and the courage to rise.
It is the presence of this great Slav race in western Europe, groping
its way forward under the conditions and difficulties which I have
described, that constitutes, as well as I am able to define it, the
race problem of southern Europe.
In many respects the situation of the Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and in southern Europe generally is more like that of the
Negroes in the Southern States than is true of any other class or
race in Europe. For one thing, the vast majority of that race are,
like the Negroes, an agricultural people. For centuries they have
lived and worked on the soil, where they have been the servants of the
great landowners, looked down upon by the educated and higher classes
as "an inferior race." Although they were not distinguished from the
dominant classes, as the Negro was, by the colour of their skin, they
were distinguished by the language they spoke, and this difference
in language seems to have been, as far as mutual understanding and
sympathy are concerned, a greater bar than the fact of colour has been
in the case of the white man and the black man in the South.
Up to a comparatively few years ago an educated Slav did not ordinarily
speak, at least in public, the language of the masses of the people.
Doctor Clarke, the head of the Austrian Mission of the American Board
in Prague, told me that as recently as thirty years ago an educated
Czech did not care to speak his own language on the streets of Prague.
At that time the German language was still the language of the educated
classes, and all the learning of Europe was, to a very large extent, a
closed book to the people who did not speak and read that language.
To-day conditions have so changed, Doctor Clarke tells me, that the
people in certain quarters of Prague scowl at any one who speaks German
on the street.
"When we go to visit an official of the Government," said Doctor
Clarke, "we usually inquire, first of all, which language this
particular official prefers to speak, German or Czech. It is wise to do
this because most of the officials, particularly if they represent the
central government of Vienna, speak German; but a Czech who is loyal to
his race will not speak the hated German unless he has to do so."
Doctor Clarke told me, as illustrating the fanaticism of the Bohemian
people in this matter of language, that his little girls, who had been
educated in German schools and preferred to speak that language among
themselves, had more than once been hooted at, and even stoned, by
young Bohemians in the part of the town where he lives, because they
spoke a language which the masses of the people had been brought up to
hate.
Another way in which the situation of the Slavic people resembles, to
a certain extent, that of the masses of the Negroes in the Southern
States, is in the matter of their political relations to the dominant
races. Both in Austria and in Hungary all the races are supposed to
have the same political privileges, and, in the case of Austria at
least, the Government seems to have made a real effort to secure equal
rights to all. Here, again, racial and traditional prejudices, as well
as the wide differences in wealth and culture of the different peoples,
have kept the political power in Austria proper in the hands of the
Germans, and in Hungary in the hands of the Magyars.
What makes the situation more difficult for the dominant races in
these two countries is the fact that the so-called inferior peoples
are increasing more rapidly than the other races in numbers, and the
Germans and Magyars are every year becoming a smaller minority in the
midst of the populations which they are attempting to control. The
result has been that the empire seems to the one who looks on from the
outside a seething mass of discontent, with nothing but the fear of
being swallowed up by some of their more powerful neighbours to hold
the nationalities together.
There is one respect in which the situation of the Negro in America
is entirely different from the various nationalities of Austria and
Hungary. The Negro is not compelled to get his education through the
medium of a language that is foreign to the other people by whom he
is surrounded. The black man in the South speaks the same tongue and
professes the same religion as the white people. He is not seeking to
set up any separate nationality for himself nor to create any interest
for himself which is separate from or antagonistic to the interest of
the other people of the United States. The Negro is not seeking to
dominate politically, at the expense of the white population, any part
of the country which he inhabits. Although he has suffered wrongs and
injustices, he has not become embittered or fanatical. Competition with
the white race about him has given the Negro an ambition to succeed and
made him feel pride in the successes he has already achieved; but he
is just as proud to be an American citizen as he is to be a Negro. He
cherishes no ambitions that are opposed to the interests of the white
people, but is anxious to prove himself a help rather than a hindrance
to the success and prosperity of the other race.
I doubt whether there are many people in our Southern States who have
considered how much more difficult the situation in the Southern
States would be if the masses of the black people spoke a language
different from the white people around them, and particularly if, at
the same time, they cherished political and social ambitions that were
antagonistic to the interests of the white man.
On the other hand, I doubt whether the Negro people realize the
advantage which they have in speaking one of the great world languages,
the language, in fact, that is more largely used than any other by the
people who are most advanced in science, in the arts, and in all that
makes the world better. English is not only a great world language,
it is the language of a people and a race among whom the highest are
neither afraid nor ashamed to reach down and lift up the lowest, and
help them in their efforts to reach a higher and a better life.
In the south of Europe conditions are quite different. The languages
spoken there, so far from helping to bring people together, are the
very means by which the peoples are kept apart. Furthermore, the masses
of the people of Austria speak languages which, until a hundred years
ago, had almost no written literature. Up to the beginning of the last
century the educated people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, and
down to the middle of the century Latin was still the language of the
Court. Until 1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech language in
Bohemia. Up to that time there were almost no newspapers, magazines, or
books printed in the language spoken by the masses of the people.
It has been said that the written or literary languages of the Slavic
people have been, with one or two exceptions, almost created during the
past hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, although they have a
rich oral literature, still have, I have been told, no written language
of their own.
A great change has been brought about in this respect in recent
years. At the present time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in
Austria-Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 938 in Magyar,
582 in Czech, and the remaining 1,480 are in some five or six other
languages. The Magyar language is now taught in all the schools of
Hungary, whether some other language is taught at the same time or not.
Outside of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are some 8,000 exclusively
German schools, 5,578 Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught
other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 schools in which Italian
is taught, the 162 schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 5 in
which Magyar is taught.
To an outsider it seems as if the purpose of these schools must be to
perpetuate the existing confusion and racial animosities in the empire.
On the other side, it must be remembered that it has been an enormous
advantage to the masses of the people to be able to read the language
which they habitually speak. In fact, the multiplication of these
different written languages, and of schools in which they are taught,
seems to have been the only way of opening to the masses of the people
the learning which had been before that time locked up in languages
which they sometimes learned to read but rarely spoke.
As I have considered the complications and difficulties, both political
and economic, which not merely Austria but Europe has to face as a
consequence of the different languages spoken by the different races, I
have asked myself what would probably happen in our Southern States if,
as some people have suggested, large numbers of these foreign peoples
were induced to settle there. I greatly fear that if these people
should come in large numbers and settle in colonies outside of the
cities, where they would have comparatively few educational advantages
and where they would be better able and more disposed to preserve their
native customs and languages, we might have a racial problem in the
South more difficult and more dangerous than that which is caused by
the presence of the Negro. Whatever else one may say of the Negro, he
is, in everything except his colour, more like the Southern white man,
more willing and able to absorb the ideas and the culture of the white
man and adapt himself to existing conditions, than is true of any race
which is now coming into this country.
Perhaps my attempt to compare racial conditions in southern Europe
with racial conditions in the southern United States will seem to some
persons a trifle strange and out of place because in the one case the
races concerned are both white, while in the other case one is white
and one is black. Nevertheless, I am convinced that a careful study of
conditions as they exist in southern Europe will throw a great deal of
light upon the situation of the races in our Southern States. More than
that, strange and irrational as racial conflicts often seem, whether
in Europe or in America, I suspect that at bottom they are merely the
efforts of groups of people to readjust their relations under changing
conditions. In short, they grow out of the efforts of the people who
are at the bottom to lift themselves to a higher stage of existence.
If that be so, it seems to me there need be no fear, under a free
government, where every man is given opportunity to get an education,
where every man is encouraged to develop in himself and bring to
the service of the community the best that is in him, that racial
difficulties should not finally be adjusted, and white man and black
man live, each helping rather than hindering the other.
CHAPTER VI
STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR IN ITALY AND HUNGARY
There is one English word which seems to be more widely known and
used in Europe than almost any other. It is the word "strike." Labour
strikes, I have understood, had their origin with the factory system in
England. But the people on the Continent have improved on the original
English device, and have found ways of using it of which we in America,
I suspect, have rarely if ever heard.
It seems to me that during my short journey in Europe I heard of
more kinds of strikes, and learned more about the different ways in
which this form of warfare can be used, than I ever learned before
in all my life. In Europe one hears, for example, of "political"
strikes, of "general" strikes, and of "agricultural" strikes--harvest
strikes--which are a peculiar and interesting variety of the ordinary
labour strikes. There are rent strikes, "hunger riots," strikes of
students, even of legislatures, and when I was in Budapest some one
called my attention to an account in one of the papers of what was
called a "house strike."
This was a case in which the tenants of one of the large tenement
buildings or apartment houses of the city had gone on strike to
compel the landlord to reduce the rent. They had hung the landlord in
effigy in the big central court around which the building is erected;
decorated the walls and balconies with scurrilous placards, and then
created such a disturbance by their jeers and outcries, supplemented
with fish horns, that the whole neighbourhood was roused. The house
strikers took this way to advertise their grievances, gain public
sympathy, and secure reduction of the rent.
I had an opportunity, during my stay in Europe, to get some first-hand
information in regard to these continental strikes. I was in Berlin
just before and after the three days' battle between the striking
coalyard men of Moabit and the police, in the course of which several
of the officers and hundreds of the people were wounded. For several
days one section of Berlin was practically in a state of siege. The
police charged the crowd with their horses, trampled the people
under foot, and cut them down with their swords. The soldiers hunted
the strikers into the neighbouring houses, where they attempted to
barricade themselves and replied to the attacks of the police by
hurling missiles from the windows of the houses into the streets below.
At night the streets were in darkness, because the strikers had cut the
electric wires, thus shutting off the lights, so that the police were
compelled to carry torches in order to distinguish friends from foes.
At another time, while I was in Fiume, Hungary, I had an opportunity
to see for myself the manner and spirit in which these strikes are
conducted, or, rather, the way in which they are put down by the police.
I had gone out one day to visit the emigrant station, which is situated
on the outskirts of the city, and noticed, on my way thither, a number
of policemen on the car. Then, apparently at a signal from a man in
charge, they seemed to melt away. Half an hour later, while I was
at the emigrant station, I was startled by loud cries outside the
building. Every one rushed to the windows. The street was crowded with
men, women, and children, all running helter-skelter in the direction
of the city. Some of the hands in a nearby factory had gone on strike.
I could not at first understand why every one seemed in such a state of
terror. Very soon I learned, however, that they were running from the
police, and a moment later the police themselves moved into view.
They were formed in a broad double line across the avenue, and,
marching rapidly, simply swept everything before them. At their head,
bearing a heavy cane, was a man in plain clothes. I do not know whether
he was an officer or the proprietor of the factory, but I was struck
with the haughty and contemptuous air with which he surveyed the rabble
as it melted away from in front of him. In a few minutes the street was
empty and, so far as I could see, the strike was over.
It was a small affair in any case. There was no bloodshed and almost
no resistance on the part of the strikers, so far as I could see. It
was sufficient, however, to give me a very vivid notion of the ruthless
way in which the governments of these stern military powers deal with
rebellious labourers. European governments seem to have the habit of
interfering, in a way of which we have no conception in this country,
in all the small intimate affairs of life. So it is not to be expected
that they would be able, like the police in this country, to act as a
neutral party or referee, so to speak, in the struggles of labour and
capital. That is the reason, I suspect, why in Europe strikes almost
always turn out to be a battle with the police or an insurrection
against the Government.
Almost anything may be made the occasion of a strike in Europe, it
seems. Sometimes in Austria and Hungary, as I learned, members of
the local diets or provincial legislatures go on a strike and refuse
to make any laws until certain demands have been complied with by the
central government at Vienna. Sometimes the students in one or more of
the national universities go on a strike because a favourite professor
has been removed by the Government, or because they are opposed to
some particular measure of the Government. Not infrequently, in France
or Italy, labour disturbances are fomented for political or party
purposes, particularly among the employees of the state railways.
Strikes are a favourite weapon of the Socialists when they are seeking
to force some political measure through parliament. Until a few years
ago it seemed that the "general strike," in which all the labourers
of a city or several cities, by suddenly laying down their tools and
refusing to return to their work, sought to force some concession by
the Government, was the means by which the Socialists proposed to
overturn all the existing governments in Europe. Since the failure of
the revolution in Russia and of similar movements on a smaller scale
in Italy and elsewhere, this form of strike seems to have fallen into
disrepute.
The most novel and interesting form of labour insurrection which
I found while I was in Europe was the "strike of the agricultural
labourers." In both Hungary and Italy the agricultural labourers have
for some years past been organized into more or less secret societies,
and the outbreaks which have been fomented by these secret societies
have been, I understand, the most bloody and the most far-reaching in
influence of any labour strikes in Europe.
The possibility that farm hands might be organized into labour
unions, and make use of this form of organization in order to compel
landowners to raise wages, had never occurred to me, and I took some
pains to learn the conditions in Hungary and Italy under which these
organizations have grown up.
I found that while the situation of the farm hands in Hungary differs
from that of the farm hands in Italy in many ways, there are two
important respects in which the situation of each is the same: First,
a large part of the land of both countries is held in large estates;
second, farm labourers, as a rule, particularly in Hungary, do not
live, as is the case in America, on the land. On the contrary, they
dwell apart in villages, so that they are hardly any more attached
to the soil they cultivate than the factory hand is attached to the
factory in which he is employed. In Hungary, for example, it is the
custom for a group of labourers to enter, during the spring and summer,
into a contract with a landowner to harvest his crop in the fall. A
contractor, who either represents or employs the farm hands, will look
over the field and bargain with the owner to do the work for a certain
per cent. of the crop. At the harvest time the contractor will arrive
with his labourers just as he would come with a gang of men to build a
house or dig a ditch. While the work is going on the labourers, men and
women together, practically camp in the fields, sleeping sometimes in
the open or in such scant shelter as they are able to find.
It happened that I was in Hungary at the harvest time, and in the
course of my journey through the country I have several times seen
these gangs of men and women going to their work at daybreak. In this
part of the country the strangest costumes are worn by the peasant
people, and the women especially, with their bright kerchiefs over
their heads, their short skirts and high boots, when they were not
barefoot, were quite as picturesque as anything I had read had led me
to expect. The labourers go to work at early dawn, because during the
harvest season the field hands work sometimes as much as fourteen to
sixteen hours a day, and then throw themselves down to rest for the
night on a truss of straw or under a single blanket. After the harvest
is over they return again to their villages.
Working in this way in troups of wandering labourers, there was no room
for any permanent human relationships between themselves and their
employers; such relationships, for example, as exist, in spite of the
differences of race and colour, between every white planter in the
South and his Negro tenants. On the other hand, the labourers, working
and living together in the way I have described, come to have a strong
sense of their common interest, all the stronger, perhaps, because they
are looked down upon by the rest of the population, and particularly by
the small landowners with whom they were associated up to the time of
their emancipation, in 1848.
About 1890 a series of bad harvests--coming on the heels of other
changes which, for a number of years, had made their lives steadily
harder--helped to increase the discontent of the farm hands. Thus it
was that when, about this time, the Socialists turned their attention
to the agricultural population of Hungary, they found the people
prepared to listen to their doctrines.
What made Socialism the more popular among the lowest farming classes
was the fact that it not only promised to teach the farm labourers how
they might increase their wages, but declared that the state was going
to take the land out of the hands of the large landowners and divide it
among the people who cultivated it.
What made the situation the more difficult was the fact that the
agricultural labourers, as soon as they were thoroughly organized, had
the landowners, during the harvest time, at a peculiar disadvantage,
because when work in the fields stopped, the standing grain ripened and
spoiled and the landowner was ruined.
In the emergency created by these strikes the Government came to the
rescue of the landowner by establishing recruiting stations for farm
labourers in different parts of the country. Collecting labourers in
those parts of the country where labour was abundant, they shipped it
to other parts of the country where, because of strikes, labourers were
scarce and crops were in danger. Thus, the Government had at one time
a reserve force of not less than 10,000 strike-breakers with which it
was at any moment able to come to the rescue of a landowner who was
threatened.
In many cases the Government undertook to regulate wages between
landowners and their hands. In some cases they even sent troops into
the fields, and in the course of the struggle there were frequent
bloody collisions between the labourers and the troops.
One effect of these disturbances was to greatly increase the amount of
immigration to America. In 1904, when the struggle was at its height,
no less than 100,000 persons, mostly from the country districts,
emigrated from Hungary. Thousands of others left the country and moved
into the cities.
Hungary is about half the size of Texas, and it has nearly five times
its population. Those who remember the "Negro exodus" of thirty years
ago, and the apprehension that was created when some 40,000 Negroes
left the plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, will be able to
understand the effect if for a number of years the South should lose
annually by emigration to the cities or to other parts of the country
100,000 of its labourers in the cotton fields.
The exodus of the farm labourer from Hungary threatened, in spite of
the rapid increase of the population, to permanently check the rising
prosperity of the country. It was soon found that the great landowners
could not rely upon repressive measures alone to solve their labour
problems. Something must be done to redress the grievances and to
improve the condition of the agricultural population. As a matter
of fact, a very great deal was done by the state for agriculture,
and something was done for the agricultural labourers. For example,
relief funds were organized in sixty-four counties and boroughs to aid
temporarily disabled workmen. Public prizes and diplomas were offered
to labourers who were faithful to their masters.
Something was done to brighten the monotony of the agricultural
labourer's life and to strengthen the ties between the labourers and
their employers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Agriculture, an
attempt was made to revive the harvest feasts, which brought the farmer
and his labourers together. Workingmen's clubs, libraries, friendly
and coöperative societies were encouraged by the Government. A popular
weekly paper, printed in seven different languages, was started for
the benefit of agricultural labourers and as a means of agricultural
education. A bill for insurance against accidents and old age for the
benefit of agricultural labourers provided that if a labourer loses
more than a week's time he shall receive, in addition to the expenses
of doctor and medicine, a sum amounting to about 25 cents a day for
sixty days. In case of death of an agricultural labourer, his family
receives a sum amounting to something between $40 and $50.
In Italy, the Socialistic movement among the agricultural classes took
a somewhat different course. For one thing, it was not confined merely
to the poorest class--namely, those labourers who live in the villages
and go out at certain seasons to assist in the work on the farms--but
extended to the small proprietors also, and those who rented land. In
many cases the large estates in Italy are not managed as in Hungary,
by the proprietor, but by middlemen and overseers, who pay a certain
amount of rent to the proprietor and then sublet to tenants. Sometimes,
particularly in southern Italy, lands are sublet a second and third
time.
In many cases the terms upon which the land was held and worked by the
small farmer were terribly oppressive, even in northern Italy, where
conditions are incomparably better than in the south.
Although the peasants in northern Italy were nominally given their
freedom in 1793, their condition, until a few years ago, has been
described by one who was himself a large land proprietor as "little
better than if they were slaves." In addition to the high rents, the
tenant farmer was compelled to furnish the overseer with a certain
number of chickens and eggs, and a certain amount of peaches, nuts,
figs, hemp and flax, in proportion to the amount of land he rented.
The overseer claimed, also, just as the overlord did in the days of
feudalism, the rights to the labour of the peasant and his ox-cart for
a certain part of every year. His children were expected to work as
servants in his household at a nominal price. The overseer sold the
crop of the tenant farmer, and, after deducting all that was coming
to him for rent and for other charges, returned the remainder to the
tenant farmer as his share of the year's work.
In one case where, as a result of the revolt of his tenants the
middleman was driven out, the tenant farmer, under the direction of
the Socialist leaders, undertook to rent the land directly from the
landowners, it was found that the middleman had been appropriating
not less than 48 per cent. of the profits, which, under the new
arrangement, went directly into the hands of the man who tilled the
soil.
For a number of years there had existed among the small farmers
numerous societies for mutual aid of various kinds. After the
Socialists began to turn their attention to the agricultural population
they succeeded in gaining leadership in these societies and used them
as a means of encouraging agricultural strikes. It was from these same
societies also that they recruited the members of those organizations
of farm labourers and tenants which have attempted to form large
estates on a coöperative basis. By this means the small farmer has
been able to do away with the middleman and still retain the advantages
which result, particularly in harvesting and marketing the crops, from
conducting the operations on a large scale.
In recent years coöperative organizations of all kinds have multiplied
among the small farmers of northern Italy. There are societies for
purchasing supplies as well as for disposing of the products of the
small farmers; the most important of these societies have been,
perhaps, the coöperative credit organizations, by means of which small
landowners have been able to escape the burden of the heavy interest
charges they were formerly compelled to pay.
I was interested to learn that both the Government and the Socialists
were at different times opposed to these coöperative societies,
although for different reasons. The Socialists were opposed to
coöperation because by removing the causes of discontent it sapped the
revolutionary spirit of the farming classes. The Government, on the
other hand, was opposed to the coöperative societies because their
leaders were so frequently revolutionists who were using the society
to stimulate discontent and organize the movement to overthrow the
Government.
The great general strike of September, 1904, which resulted in
practically putting an end, for five days, to all kinds of business
industries in the city of Milan, was provoked by the state police
firing upon some peasants who were holding a meeting to pay their
shares and take their lots in an agricultural coöperative society.
I have attempted to describe at some length the character of the
Socialistic movement as I found it in Hungary and Italy, because it
represents on the whole the movement of the masses at the bottom of
life in Europe. Through this party, for the first time, millions of
human beings who have had no voice in and no definite ideas in respect
to the Government under which they lived are learning to think and to
give expression to their wants.
Few people, I venture to say, have any definite notion to what
extent the most remote parts of Europe, from which the majority of
our immigrants now come, have been penetrated by the ideas and the
sentiments of the Socialistic party. There are, for example, some
five or six different branches of the party in Bohemia. Socialism, I
learn, has made its way even into such countries as Roumania, Servia,
Bulgaria, and Dalmatia, where perhaps three fourths of the population
are engaged in agriculture.
There are, however, as I discovered, various kinds and types of
Socialism. I think I saw during my journey across Europe as many
different kinds of Socialists as I did kinds of Jews, which is saying
a good deal. In Denmark and Italy, for example, I met men of the very
highest type who were members of the Socialist party. In Copenhagen
I was entertained by the editors of the Socialistic paper, _The
Politiken_, which is perhaps the most ably edited and influential paper
in Denmark. In Italy many of the most patriotic as well as the most
brilliant men in the country, writers, students, and teachers, are
members of the Socialist party.
In Poland, on the other hand, I met other Socialists who had taken an
active part in the revolution in Russia and who, for aught I know, were
members of that group of desperate men who are said even now to be
plotting from Cracow, Austria, a new revolutionary movement among the
agricultural classes in Russia.
In short, I found that where the masses of the people are oppressed,
where the people at the bottom are being crushed by those who are
above them, there Socialism means revolution. On the other hand, where
governments have shown a liberal spirit, and especially where the
Socialists have had an opportunity to participate in the Government, or
have been able, by means of the coöperative societies I have described,
to do constructive work for the benefit of the masses, they have
ceased to be revolutionists, have no longer sought to overturn the
Government, but have patriotically striven to strengthen the existing
order by freeing it from those defects that were dangerous to its
existence.
In saying this, I do not mean to imply that I in any way favour the
Socialistic programme of reform. I live in the Southern States, a
part of the country which, more than any other part of the civilized
world, still believes that the best government is the government that
governs least; the government that you can wear like an old coat,
without feeling it. More than that, I believe that the best and only
fundamental way of bringing about reform is not by revolution, not
through political machinery that tries to control and direct the
individual from the outside, but by education, which gets at the
individual from within; in short, fits him for life but leaves him free.
There is much in the history of the agricultural labourers of Hungary
and Italy that is interesting to any one who has studied the condition
of the Negro farm labourer in the South. In many respects their history
has been the same. There is, however, this difference: When the serfs
were freed in Hungary, as in most other parts of Europe, provision was
made to give them land, though to a very large extent they were denied
the political privileges enjoyed by the upper classes.
In Italy also it was intended, in giving the serfs freedom, to give
them likewise land. Again, when the vast estates of the Church were
taken over by the State, an attempt was made to increase the class
of small owners and to give the land to the people who tilled it. In
both cases, however, it was but a few years before the greater portion
of the peasant owners were wiped out and their lands absorbed into
the large estates. At the present time the small landowners, under
the influence of education and agricultural organization, are gaining
ground, and both countries, in the interest of agriculture, are seeking
to encourage this movement.
The case of the Negro was just the opposite. When the masses of the
Negro people were turned loose from slavery they carried in their hands
the ballot that they did not know how to use, but they took no property
with them. At the present time, I believe, by a conservative estimate,
that the Negroes in the South own not less than twenty million acres
of land, an area equal to the five New England States of Vermont, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
On the other hand, the Negroes have largely lost, at least temporarily,
many of the political privileges which were given them at emancipation.
The experience of the peasants of Europe, just as the experience of
the Negro in America, has served to confirm an opinion I have long
held--namely, that it is very hard for a man to keep anything that he
has not earned or does not know how to use. And in most cases, the best
way and, in fact, the only way to insure any people in the possession
either of property or political privileges is to fit them by education
to use these gifts for their own good and for the highest good of the
community in which they live.
The peasants were given land without effort on their part and soon lost
it. The masses of the Negroes were given the ballot without effort
on their part and they soon lost it. The peasants are now gradually
gaining the land through their own effort and are keeping it. The
masses of Negroes are gradually gaining the ballot through their own
effort, and are likely to keep it when so gained.
CHAPTER VII
NAPLES AND THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT
I had crossed Europe from north to south before I got my first glimpse
of an emigrant bound for America. On the way from Vienna to Naples I
stopped at midnight at Rome, and in the interval between trains I spent
an hour in wandering about in the soft southern air--such air as I had
not found anywhere since I left my home in Alabama.
In returning to the station my curiosity was aroused, as I was passing
in the shadow of the building, by what seemed to me a large vacant room
near the main entrance to the station. As I attempted to enter this
room I stumbled over the figure of a man lying on the stone floor.
Looking farther, I saw something like forty or fifty persons, men as
well as women, lying on the floor, their faces turned toward the wall,
asleep.
The room itself was apparently bare and empty of all furniture. There
was neither a bench nor a table, so far as I could see, in any part of
the room. It seems that, without any expectation of doing so, I had
wandered into the room reserved for emigrants, and came accidentally
upon one of the sights I most wanted to see in Italy--namely, a party
of emigrants bound for America.
As near as I could learn, these people were, for the most part,
peasants, who had come in from the surrounding country, carrying what
little property they possessed on their backs or tied up in little
bundles in their arms, and were awaiting the arrival of the train
that was to take them to the port from which they could take ship for
America.
I confess it struck me as rather pathetic that, in this splendid
new and modern railway station, in which the foreign traveller and
the native Italian of the upper classes were provided with every
convenience and luxury, so little thought had been given to the comfort
of these humble travellers, who represent the people in Italy who pay
proportionately most of the taxes, and who, by their patient industry
and thrift, have contributed more than any other class to such progress
as Italy has made in recent years.
Later on I had an opportunity to pass through the country from which
perhaps the majority of these emigrants had come. I travelled through
a long stretch of country where one sees only now and then a lonesome
shepherd or a wretched hut with one low room and a cow-stall. I also
visited some of the little villages which one sees clinging to the
barren hilltops, to escape the poisonous mists of the plains below.
There I saw the peasants in their homes and learned something of
the way in which the lowly people in the rural districts have been
neglected and oppressed. After that I was able to understand that it
was no special hardship that these emigrants suffered at Rome. Perhaps
many of them had never before slept in a place so clean and sanitary as
the room the railway provided them.
Early the next morning, as my train was approaching Naples, my
attention was attracted by the large number of women I saw at work
in the fields. It was not merely the number of women but the heavy
wrought-iron hoes, of a crude and primitive manufacture, with which
these women worked that aroused my interest. These hoes were much like
the heavy tools I had seen the slaves use on the plantations before the
Civil War. With these heavy instruments some of the women seemed to be
hacking the soil, apparently preparing it for cultivation; others were
merely leaning wearily upon their tools, as if they were over-tired
with the exertion. This seemed quite possible to me, because the
Italian women are slighter and not as robust as the women I had seen
at work in the fields in Austria.
I inquired why it was that I saw so many women in the fields in this
part of the country, for I had understood that Italian women, as a
rule, did not go so frequently into field work as the women do in
Austria and Hungary. I learned that it was because so many of the men
who formerly did this work had emigrated to America. As a matter of
fact, three fourths of the emigration from Italy to America comes from
Sicily and the other southern provinces. There are villages in lower
Italy which have been practically deserted. There are others in which
no one but women and old men are left behind, and the whole population
is more than half supported by the earnings of Italian labourers in
America. There are cities within twenty miles of Naples which have lost
within ten years two thirds of their inhabitants. In fact, there is
one little village not far from the city of which it is said that the
entire male population is in America.
Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I passed through the farming
country south of Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants go
every year to the United States. It is a sad and desolate region.
Earthquakes, malaria, antiquated methods of farming, and the general
neglect of the agricultural population have all contributed to the
miseries of the people. The land itself--at least such portion of
it as I saw--looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and the general air
of desolation is emphasized when, as happened in my case, one comes
suddenly, in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon some magnificent
and lonely ruin representing the ancient civilization that flourished
here two thousand years ago.
Statistics which have been recently collected, after an elaborate
investigation by the Italian Government, show that, in a general way,
the extent of emigration from southern Italy is in direct ratio to
the neglect of the agricultural classes. Where the wages are smallest
and the conditions hardest, there emigration has reached the highest
mark. In other words, it is precisely from those parts of Italy where
there are the greatest poverty, crime, and ignorance that the largest
number of emigrants from Italy go out to America, and, I might add,
the smallest number return. Of the 511,935 emigrants who came to North
and South America from Italy in 1906, 380,615 came from Sicily and the
southern provinces.
One of the most interesting experiences I had while in Europe was
in observing the number of different classes and races there are in
Europe who look down upon, and take a hopeless view of, certain of
their neighbours because they regard them as inferior. For example, one
of the first things I learned in Italy was that the people in northern
Italy look down upon the people of southern Italy as an inferior race.
I heard and read many times while I was in Italy stories and anecdotes
illustrating the childishness, the superstition, and the ignorance of
the peasant people, and the lower classes generally in southern Italy.
In fact, nothing that I have known or heard about the superstition
of the Negro people in America compares with what I heard about the
superstition of the Italian peasants. What surprised me more was to
learn that statistics gathered by the Italian Government indicate that
in southern Italy, contrary to the experience of every other country,
the agricultural labourers are physically inferior to every other class
of the population. The people in the rural districts are shorter of
stature and in a poorer condition generally than they are in the cities.
For all these reasons I was the more anxious to learn for myself what
these people were like. I wanted to find out precisely in what this
inferiority of the southern Italian consisted, because I knew that
these people were very largely descended from the ancient Greeks, who,
by reputation at least, were the most gifted people the world has ever
known.
The city of Naples offers some advantages for studying the southern
population, since it is the port at which the stream of emigration from
the small towns and farming districts of the interior reaches the sea.
The exportation of labourers to America is one of the chief businesses
of that city. It was at Naples, then, that I gained my earliest
first-hand acquaintance with the Italians of the south.
I think the thing that impressed me most about Naples was the contrast
between the splendour of its natural surroundings, the elegance and
solidity of its buildings, and the dirt, disorder, and squalor in which
the masses of the people live. It was early morning when I arrived in
the city for the first time. The sun, which was just rising over the
black mass of Vesuvius, flooded the whole city and the surrounding
country with the most enchanting light. In this soft light the gray
and white masses of the city buildings, piled against the projecting
hillside to the right and stretching away along the curving shores to
the left, made a picture which I shall never forget.
Some of this sunshine seemed to have got into the veins of the people,
too, for I never saw anywhere so much sparkle and colour, so much life
and movement, as I did among the people who throng the narrow streets
of Naples. I never heard before so many curious human noises or saw
such vivid and expressive gestures. On the other hand, I never saw
anywhere before so many beggars, so many barefooted men, so many people
waiting at the station and around the streets to pick up a casual job.
It seemed to me that there were at least six porters to every passenger
who got off the train, and these porters were evidently well organized,
for I had the experience of seeing myself and my effects calmly
parcelled out among half a dozen of them, every one of whom demanded,
of course, a separate fee for his services.
My experience in Europe leads me to conclude that the number of casual
labourers, hucksters, vagabonds, and hunters of odd jobs one meets in
a city is a pretty good index of the condition of the masses of the
people. By this measure I think that I should have been able to say at
the outset that there was in Naples a larger class living in the dirt,
degradation, and ignorance at the bottom of society than in any other
city I visited in Europe. I make this statement even though cities like
Catania and Palermo, in Sicily, which are surrounded by an agricultural
population just as wretched, are little, if any, better than Naples in
this respect.
Very few persons who go to Naples merely as sightseers ever get
acquainted, I suspect, with the actual conditions of the people. Most
travellers who see Naples are carried away by the glamour of the
sunshine, the colour, and the vivacity of the Italian temperament. For
that reason they do not see the hard struggle for existence which goes
on in the narrow streets of the city, or, if they do, they look upon
the shifts and devices to which this light-hearted people are driven
in order to live as merely part of the picturesqueness of the southern
life and people.
I have been more than once through the slums and poorer quarters of
the coloured people of New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New
York, and my personal observation convinces me that the coloured
population of these cities is in every way many per cent. better off
than the corresponding classes in Naples and the other Italian cities
I have named. As far as the actual hardships they have to endure or
the opportunities open to them, the condition of the Negroes in these
cities does not compare, in my opinion, with that of the masses of the
Italians in these southern Italian cities.
There is this difference also: the majority of the Negroes in the
large cities of the South and North in the United States are from the
country. They have been accustomed to range and wander in a country
where life was loose and simple, and existence hardly a problem. They
have not been accustomed to either the comforts or the hardships of
complex city life. In the case of the Italians, life in the crowded,
narrow streets, and the unsanitary intimacy and confusion in which men,
goats, and cattle here mingle, have become the fixed habit of centuries.
It is not an unusual thing, for instance, to find a cow or a mule
living in close proximity, if not in the same room, with the rest
of the family, and, in spite of the skill and artistic taste which
show themselves everywhere in the construction and decoration of the
buildings, the dirt and disorder in which the people live in these
buildings are beyond description. Frequently, in passing through the
streets of these southern cities, one meets a herd of goats wandering
placidly along over the stone pavements, nibbling here and there in the
gutters or holding up in front of a house to be milked.
Even where the city government has made the effort to widen and improve
the streets, let in air and sunlight, and maintain sanitary conditions,
the masses of the people have not yet learned to make use of these
conveniences. I recall, in passing along one of these streets, in
the centre of the city, which had been recently laid out with broad
stone sidewalks and built up with handsome three and four story stone
buildings, seeing a man and a cow standing on the sidewalk at the
corner of the street. It seemed to me that the natural thing would have
been to let the cow stand in the street and not obstruct the sidewalk.
But these people evidently look upon the cow as having the same rights
as other members of the population. While the man who owned the cow was
engaged in milking, a group of women from the neighbouring tenements
stood about with their pitchers and gossiped, awaiting their turn at
the cow.
This method of distributing milk--namely, by driving the animal to
the front door and milking while you wait--has some advantages. It
makes it unnecessary to sterilize the milk, and adulteration becomes
impracticable. The disadvantage is that, in order to make this method
of milk delivery possible, the cow and the goat must become city
dwellers and live in the same narrow streets with the rest of the
population. Whatever may be true of the goat, however, I am sure that
the cow is not naturally adapted to city life, and where, as is true
in many instances, whole families are forced to crowd into one or
two rooms, the cow-stall is likely to be still more crowded. Under
these conditions I am sure that the average cow is going to be neither
healthy nor happy.
For my purposes it is convenient to divide the life of Naples into
three classes. There is the life of the main avenues or boulevards,
where one sees all that is charming in Neapolitan life. The buildings
are handsome, streets are filled with carriages, sidewalks are crowded
with handsomely dressed people. Occasionally one sees a barefooted
beggar asleep on the marble steps of some public building. Sometimes
one sees, as I did, a woman toiling up the long street side by side
with a donkey pulling a cart. There are a good many beggars, but even
they are cheerful, and they hold out their hands to you with a roguish
twinkle in their eyes that somehow charms the pennies out of your
pocket.
Then there is the life of the narrower streets, which stretch out in an
intricate network all over the older part of the city. Many of these
streets contain the homes as well as the workshops of the artisan
class. Others are filled with the petty traffic of hucksters and small
tradesmen. In one street you may find a long row of pushcarts, with
fish and vegetables, or strings of cheap meat dangling from cords,
surrounded by a crowd, chaffering and gesticulating--Neapolitan
bargain-hunters. In another street you will find, intermingled with
the little shops, skilled artisans with their benches pushed half
into the street, at work at their various tasks. Here you will see
a wood-carver at his open doorway, busily engaged in carving out an
elegant bit of furniture, while in the back of the shop his wife is
likely to be engaged in getting the midday meal. A little farther along
you may meet a goldsmith, a worker in iron or in copper. One is making
a piece of jewellery, the other is mending a kettle. In these streets
one sees, in fact, all the old handicrafts carried on in much the same
manner and apparently with the same skill that they were carried on
three hundred years ago.
Finally, there are the narrower, darker, dirtier streets which are
not picturesque and into which no ordinary traveller ventures. This
seldom-visited region was, however, the one in which I was particularly
interested, for I had come to Naples to see the people and to see the
worst.
In the neighbourhood of the hotel where I stayed there was a
narrow, winding street which led by a stone staircase from the main
thoroughfare up the projecting hillside to one of those dark and
obscure alleyways for which Naples, in spite of the improvements which
have been made in recent years, is still noted. Near the foot of the
stairs there was a bakery, and not far away was the office of the
State Lottery. The little street to which I refer is chiefly inhabited
by fishermen and casual labourers, who belong to the poorest class of
the city. They are the patrons also of the lottery and the bakery, for
there is no part of Naples that is so poor that it does not support the
luxury of a lottery; and, I might add, there are few places of business
that are carried on in a filthier manner than these bakeries of the
poorer classes.
I was passing this place late in the afternoon, when I was surprised to
see a huckster--I think he was a fish vender--draw up his wagon at the
foot of this stone staircase and begin unhitching his mule. I looked
on with some curiosity, because I could not, for the life of me, make
out where he was going to put that animal after he had unhitched him.
Presently the mule, having been freed from the wagon, turned of his own
motion and began clambering up the staircase. I was so interested that
I followed.
A little way up the hill the staircase turned into a dark and dirty
alleyway, which, however, was crowded with people. Most of them were
sitting in their doorways or in the street; some were knitting, some
were cooking over little charcoal braziers which were placed out in the
street. One family had the table spread in the middle of the road and
had just sat down very contentedly to their evening meal. The street
was strewn with old bottles, dirty papers, and all manner of trash; at
the same time it was filled with sprawling babies and with chickens,
not to mention goats and other household appurtenances. The mule,
however, was evidently familiar with the situation, and made his way
along the street, without creating any surprise or disturbance, to his
own home.
I visited several other streets during my stay in Naples which were,
if possible, in a worse condition than the one I have described. In a
city where every one lives in the streets more than half the time, and
where all the intimate business of life is carried on with a frankness
and candour of which we in America have no conception, there is little
difficulty in seeing how people live. I noted, for example, instances
in which the whole family, to the number of six or seven, lived in a
single room, on a dirt floor, without a single window. More than that,
this one room, which was in the basement of a large tenement house, was
not as large as the average one-room Negro cabin in the South. In one
of these one-room homes I visited there was a blacksmith shop in one
part of the room, while the family ate and slept in the other part. The
room was so small that I took the trouble to measure it, and found it 8
× 13 feet in size.
Many of these homes of the poorer classes are nothing better than dark
and damp cellars. More than once I found in these dark holes sick
children and invalid men and women living in a room in which no ray of
light entered except through the open door. Sometimes there would be
a little candle burning in front of a crucifix beside the bed of the
invalid, but this flickering taper, lighting up some pale, wan face,
only emphasized the dreary surroundings. It was a constant source of
surprise to me that under such conditions these people could be so
cheerful, friendly, and apparently contented.
I made some inquiry as to what sort of amusements they had. I found
that one of the principal forms of amusement of this class of people is
gambling. What seems stranger still, this vice is in Italy a Government
monopoly. The state, through its control of the lottery, adds to the
other revenue which it extracts from the people not less than five
million dollars a year, and this sum comes, for the most part, from the
very poorest part of the population.
There are, it seems, something like 1,700 or 1,800 offices scattered
through the several large cities of Italy where the people may buy
lottery tickets. It seemed to me that the majority of these offices
must be in Naples, for in going about the city I saw them almost
everywhere, particularly in the poorer quarters.
These lottery offices were so interesting that I determined to visit
one myself and learn how the game was played. It seems that there is a
drawing every Saturday. Any one may bet, whatever amount he chooses,
that a number somewhere between one and ninety will turn up in the
drawing. Five numbers are drawn. If you win, the lottery pays ten to
one. You may also bet that any two of the five numbers drawn will turn
up in succession. In that case, the bank pays the winner something like
fifty to one. You may also bet that three out of five will turn up, and
in case you win the bank pays 250 times the amount you bet. Of course
the odds are very much against the player, and it is estimated that the
state gets about 50 per cent. of all the money that is paid in. The art
of the game consists, according to popular superstition, in picking a
lucky number. In order to pick a lucky number, however, one must go to
a fortune-teller and have one's dreams interpreted, or one must pick a
number according to some striking event, for it is supposed that every
event of any importance suggests some lucky number. Of course all this
makes the game more interesting and complicated, but it is, after all,
a very expensive form of amusement for poor people.
From all that I can learn, public sentiment in Italy is rapidly being
aroused to the evils which cling to the present system of dealing with
the agricultural labourer and the poorer classes. But Italy has not
done well by her lower classes in the past. She has oppressed them with
heavy taxes; has maintained a land system that has worn out the soil
at the same time that it has impoverished the labourer; has left the
agricultural labourers in ignorance; has failed to protect them from
the rapacity of the large landowners; and has finally driven them to
seek their fortunes in a foreign land.
In return, these emigrants have repaid their native country by vastly
increasing her foreign commerce, by pouring back into Italy the
earnings they have made abroad, by themselves returning with new ideas
and new ambitions and entering into the work of building up the country.
These returned emigrants have brought back to the mother country
improved farming machinery, new methods of labour, and new capital.
Italian emigrants abroad not only contribute to their mother country
a sum estimated at between five and six million dollars annually, but
Italian emigration has awakened Italy to the value of her labouring
classes, and in doing this has laid the foundation for the prosperity
of the whole country. In fact, Italy is another illustration that the
condition of the man at the bottom affects the life of every class
above him. It is to the class lowest down that Italy largely owes what
prosperity she has as yet attained.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LABOURER AND THE LAND IN SICILY
Among the things that make Sicily interesting are its ruins. There are
dead cities which even in their decay are larger and more magnificent
than the living cities that have grown up beside them--larger and more
magnificent even than any living city in Sicily to-day. There are
relics of this proud and ancient past everywhere in this country.
In the modern city of Catania, for example, I came suddenly one day
upon the ruins of the forum of a Roman city which was buried under
the modern Italian one. At Palermo I learned that when the members
of the Mafia, which is the Sicilian name for the "Black Hand," want
to conceal a murder they have committed, they put the body in one of
the many ancient tombs outside the city, and leave it there for some
archæologist to discover and learn from it the interesting fact that
the ancient inhabitants of Sicily were in all respects like the modern
inhabitants.
Among the other antiquities that one may see in Sicily, however, is
a system of agriculture and method of tilling the soil that is two
thousand years old. In fact, some of the tools still in use in the
interior of the island are older than the ruins of those ancient
heathen temples, some of which were built five centuries before Christ.
These living survivals, I confess, were more interesting to me than the
dead relics of the past.
These things are not easy to find. The guide-books mention them, but do
not tell you where to look for them. Nevertheless, if one looks long
enough and in the right place it is still possible to see in Sicily men
scratching the field with an antique wooden plow, which, it is said,
although I cannot vouch for that, is mentioned in Homer. One may see
a Sicilian farmer laboriously pumping water to irrigate his cabbage
garden with a water-wheel that was imported by the Saracens; or one may
see, as I did, a wine press that is as old as Solomon, and men cutting
the grapes and making the wine by the same methods that are described
in the Bible.
It was my purpose in going to Sicily to see, if possible, some of the
life of the man who works on the soil. I wanted to get to the people
who lived in the little villages remote from the larger cities. I was
anxious to talk with some of these herdsmen I had seen at a distance,
wandering about the lonesome hillsides, tending their goats and their
cows and perhaps counting the stars as the shepherds did in the time of
Abraham. As there are some 800,000 persons engaged in agriculture in
one way or another, it did not seem to me that this would be difficult.
In spite of this fact, if I may judge by my own experience, one of the
most difficult persons to meet and get acquainted with in this country,
where many things are strange and hard to understand, is the man who
works out in the open country on the land.
Even after one does succeed in finding this man, it is necessary to
go back into history two or three hundred years and know a great deal
about local conditions before one can understand the methods by which
he works and thinks. In fact, I constantly had the feeling while I was
in Sicily that I was among people who were so saturated with antiquity,
so out of touch, except on the surface, with modern life, so imbedded
in ancient habits and customs, that it would take a very long time,
perhaps years, to get any real understanding of their ways of thinking
and living.
In saying this I do not, of course, refer to the better classes who
live in the cities, and especially I do not refer to the great
landowners, who in Sicily do not live on the land, but make their homes
in the cities and support themselves from the rents which are paid them
by overseers or middlemen, to whom they usually turn over the entire
management of their properties.
Nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties I have mentioned, I did get
some insight into the condition of the rural agricultural classes in
Sicily--namely, the small landowner and the agricultural labourer--and
I can perhaps best tell what I learned by starting at the beginning.
The first thing I remember seeing of Sicily was a long black headland
which stretches out into the sea like a great black arm toward the
ships that approach Palermo from Naples. After that the dark mass
of the mainland, bare and brown and shining in the morning light,
seemed to rise suddenly out of the smooth and glittering sea. A little
later, the whole splendid panorama of the beautiful bay of Palermo lay
stretched out before me.
I recall this picture now because it suggests and partly explains the
charm which so many travellers find in this island, and because it
stands out in contrast with so much that I saw later when I visited the
interior.
Sicily is, in this, like a great many other places I saw in Europe:
it looks better on the outside than it looks on the in. All the large
cities in Sicily are situated on a narrow rim of fertile land which
encircles the island between the mountains and the sea. Palermo, for
example, is situated on a strip of this rim which is so rich that
it is called the "Shell of Gold." In this region, where the soil is
constantly enriched from the weathering of the neighbouring mountains,
and where agriculture has been carried to the highest perfection that
science and the skill of man can bring it, are situated those wonderful
orange and lemon groves for which Sicily is famous. As an illustration
of what irrigation and intensive culture can do in this soil, it is
stated that the value of the crop in this particular region has been
increased by irrigation from $8 to $160 an acre.
When one goes to Sicily to look at the agriculture it is this region
that one sees first. During my first day in Palermo I drove through
miles of these magnificent fruit farms, all laid out in the most
splendid style, surrounded by high stone walls, the entrance guarded
by heavy iron gates, and provided with extensive works for supplying
constant streams of water to the growing fruit. The whole country,
which is dotted with beautiful villas and winter palaces, is less like
a series of fruit farms than it is like one vast park. Here the fruit
ripens practically the whole year round. The trees are heavy all winter
with growing fruit, and one can wander for hours through a forest of
lemon and orange trees so closely crowded together that the keen rays
of the southern sun can scarcely penetrate their foliage.
Palermo, however, like many other European cities in which the masses
of the people are just now emerging out of the older civilization into
the newer modern life, is divided into an old and a new city. There is
the northern end, with broad streets and handsome villas, which the
people call the "English Garden." This is the new city and the quarter
of the wealthy classes. Then at the southern end there is the old city,
with crowded, narrow and often miserably dirty streets, which is the
home of the poorer class.
After visiting one or two of the estates in the suburbs at the northern
end of the city, I determined to see some of the truck farms of the
smaller farmers which I had heard were located at the south end of
the city. I made up my mind, also, if possible, to get out into the
country, into the wilder and less settled regions, where I could
plainly see from my hotel window the olive groves creeping up the
steep mountainside and almost visibly searching out the crevices and
sheltered places on the steep slopes in search of water, which is the
one missing ingredient in the soil and climate of this southern country.
Now one of the singular things about Palermo and some other cities in
Sicily is that, as soon as you get to the edge of the town, you find
yourself driving or walking between high stone walls which entirely
shut out the view in every direction. We drove for an hour through
these blind alleys, winding and twisting about without seeing anything
of the country except occasionally the tops of the trees above the high
stone walls that guarded the farms on either side. Occasionally we
passed heavy iron gates which looked like the gates of a prison. Now
and then we came upon a little group of houses built into the walls.
These barren little cells, lighted only by an open door, looked as if
they might be part of a prison, except for the number of sprawling
children, the goats, and the chickens, and the gossiping housewives
who sat outside their houses in the shadow of the wall sewing, or
engaged in some other ordinary household task. There was scarcely a
sprig of grass anywhere to be seen. The roads frequently became almost
impassable for wagons, and eventually degenerated into mere mule paths,
through which it seemed almost impossible, with our carriage, to reach
the open country.
What added to the prison-like appearance of the place was the fact
that, as soon as we approached the edge of the town, we met, every
hundred yards or more, a soldier or a police officer sitting near his
sentry box, guarding the approaches to the city. When I inquired what
the presence of these soldiers meant, I was told that they were customs
officers and were stationed there to prevent the smuggling of food and
vegetables into the city, without the payment of the municipal tax
which, it seems, is levied on every particle of produce that is brought
into the city. I am sure that in the course of half an hour we met as
many as twenty of these officers watching the highway for smugglers.
As we proceeded, our driver, who had made several fruitless attempts to
turn us aside into an old church or cemetery, to see the "antee-chee,"
as he called it, grew desperate. When I inquired what was the trouble
I learned that we had succeeded in getting him into a part of the city
that he had never before visited in his whole life, and he was afraid
that if he went too far into some of the roads in which we urged him to
go he would never be able to get back. Finally we came to a road that
appeared to lead to a spot where it seemed one could at least overlook
the surrounding country. We urged him to go on, but he hesitated,
stopped to inquire the way of a passing peasant and then, as if he had
made a mighty resolve, he whipped up his horse and said he would go on
even if that road took him to "paradise." All this time we were not a
quarter of a mile beyond the limits of the customs zone of the city.
Finally we came, by good fortune, to a hole in one of the walls that
guarded the highway. We stopped the carriage, got out, clambered up the
steep bank and made our way through this hole into the neighbouring
field. Then we straightened up and took a long breath because it seemed
like getting out of prison to be able to look about and see something
green and growing again.
We had hardly put our heads through the hole in this wall, however,
when we saw two or three men lying in the shade of a little
straw-thatched hut, in which the guards sleep during the harvest
season, to keep the thieves from carrying away the crops. As soon as
these men saw us, one of them, who seemed to be the proprietor, arose
and came toward us. We explained that we were from America and that
we were interested in agriculture. As soon as this man learned that
we were from America he did everything possible he could to make us
welcome. It seems that these men had just sat down to their evening
meal, which consisted of black bread and tomatoes. Tomatoes seemed to
be the principal part of the crop that this farmer was raising at that
time. He invited us, in the politest manner possible, to share his
meal with him and seemed greatly disappointed that we did not accept.
Very soon he began telling the same story, which I heard so frequently
afterward during my stay in Sicily. He had a son in America, who was in
a place called Chicago, he said, and he wanted to know if I had ever
heard of such a place and if so perhaps I might have met his son.
The old man explained to me all about his farm; how he raised his crop
and how he harvested it. He had about two acres of land, as well as I
could make out, for which he paid in rent about $15 per acre a year.
This included, as I understood, the water for irrigation purposes. He
admitted that it took a lot of work to make a living for himself, and
the others who were helping him, from this small piece of land. It
was very hard to live anywhere in Sicily, he said, but the people in
Palermo were much better off than they were in other places.
I asked him what he would do if his son should come back from America
with a bag of money. The old man's face lighted up and he said
promptly, "Get some land and have a little home of my own."
Many times since then I have asked the same or similar questions of
some man I met working on the soil. Everywhere I received the same
answer. Everywhere among the masses of the people is this desire to get
close to the soil and own a piece of land of their own.
From where we stood we could look out over the country and see in
several places the elaborate and expensive works that had been erected
for pumping water by steam for the purposes of irrigation. One of the
small farmers I visited had a small engine in the back of his house
which he used to irrigate a garden of cauliflower about four acres in
extent. This man lived in a little low stone and stucco house, but
he was, I learned, one of the well-to-do class. He had an engine for
pumping water which cost him, he said, about $500. I saw as I entered
his place a little stream of water, not much larger than my thumb,
drizzling out of the side of the house and trickling out into the
garden. He said it cost him between $4 and $5 a day to run that engine.
The coal he used came from England.
I had seen, as I entered the Palermo harbour, the manner in which this
coal was unloaded, and it gave me the first tangible evidence I had
found of the cheapness of human labour in this over-populated country.
Instead of the great machines which are used for that purpose in
America and England, I learned, this work was all done by hand.
In order to take this coal from the ship it was first loaded into
baskets, which were swung over the side of the vessel and there piled
upon a lighter. This lighter was then moved from the ships to the
shore. The baskets were then lifted out by hand and the coal dumped
on the wharf. From these it was reloaded into carts and carried away.
It was this coal, handled in this expensive way, that this farmer was
using to pump the water needed to irrigate his land.
After leaving Palermo I went to Catania, at the other side of the
island. The railway which climbs the mountains in crossing the island
took me through a very different country and among very different
people than those I had seen at Palermo. It was a wild, bare,
mountainous region through which we passed; more bare, perhaps, at the
time I saw it than at other times, because the grain had been harvested
and plowing had not begun. There were few regular roads anywhere. Now
and then the train passed a lonely water-wheel; now and then I saw,
winding up a rocky footpath, a donkey or pack-mule carrying water to
the sulphur mines or provisions to some little inland mountain village.
Outside of these little villages, in which the farm labourers live, the
country was perfectly bare. One can ride for miles through this thickly
populated country without seeing a house or a building of any kind,
outside of the villages.
In Sicily less than 10 per cent. of the farming class live in the open
country. This results in an enormous waste of time and energy. The farm
labourer has to walk many miles to and from his labour. A large part of
the year he spends far away from his home. During this time he camps
out in the field in some of the flimsy little straw-thatched shelters
that one sees scattered over the country, or perhaps he finds himself a
nest in the rocks or a hole in the ground. During this time he lives,
so to speak, on the country. If he is a herdsman, he has his cows' or
goats' milk to drink. Otherwise his food consists of a piece of black
bread and perhaps a bit of soup of green herbs of some kind or other.
During my journey through this mountain district, and in the course
of a number of visits to the country which I made later, I had
opportunity to learn something of the way these farming people live.
I have frequently seen men who had done a hard day's work sit down to
a meal which consisted of black bread and a bit of tomato or other raw
vegetable. In the more remote regions these peasant people frequently
live for days or months, I learned, on almost any sort of green thing
they find in the fields, frequently eating it raw, just like the cattle.
When they were asked how it was possible to eat such stuff, they
replied that it was good; "it tasted sweet," they said.
I heard, while I was in Sicily, of the case of a woman who, after her
husband had been sent to prison, supported herself from the milk she
obtained from a herd of goats, which she pastured on the steep slopes
of the mountains. Her earnings amounted to not more than 12 to 14 cents
a day, and, as this was not sufficient for bread for herself and her
four children, she picked up during the day all sorts of green stuff
that she found growing upon the rocks, and carried it home in her apron
at night to fill the hungry mouths that were awaiting her return.
Persons who have had an opportunity to carefully study the condition of
this country say it is incredible what sort of things these poor people
in the interior of Sicily will put into their stomachs.
One of the principal articles of diet, in certain seasons of the year,
is the fruit of a cactus called the Indian fig, which grows wild in all
parts of the island. One sees it everywhere, either by the roadside,
where it is used for hedges, or clinging to the steep cliffs on the
mountainside. The fruit, which is about the size and shape of a very
large plum, is contained in a thick, leathern skin, which is stripped
off and fed to the cattle. The fruit within is soft and mushy and has a
rather sickening, sweetish taste, which, however, is greatly relished
by the country people.
One day, in passing through one of the suburbs of Catania, I stopped in
front of a little stone and stucco building which I thought at first
was a wayside shrine or chapel. But it turned out to be a one-room
house. This house had a piece of carpet hung as a curtain in front of
the broad doorway. In front of this curtain there was a rude table made
of rough boards; on this table was piled a quantity of the Indian figs
I have described and some bottles of something or other that looked
like what we in America call "pop."
Two very good-looking young women were tending this little shop. I
stopped and talked with them and bought some of the cactus fruit. I
found it sold five pieces for a cent. They told me that from the
sale of this fruit they made about 17 cents a day, and upon this sum
they and their father, who was an invalid, were compelled to support
themselves. There were a few goats and chickens and two pigs wandering
about the place, and I learned that one of the economies of the
household consisted in feeding the pigs and goats upon the shells or
husks of the Indian figs that were eaten and thrown upon the ground.
As near as I could learn, from all that I heard and read, the condition
of the agricultural population in Sicily has been growing steadily
worse for half a century, at least.
Persons who have made a special study of the physical condition of
these people declare that this part of the population shows marked
signs of physical and mental deterioration, due, they say, to the lack
of sufficient food. For example, in respect to stature and weight, the
Sicilians are nearly 2 per cent. behind the population in northern
Italy. This difference is mainly due to the poor physical condition
of the agricultural classes, who, like the agricultural population of
the southern mainland of Italy, are smaller than the population in the
cities.
In this connection, it is stated that considerably less than one third
as much meat is consumed per capita in Sicily as in northern Italy.
Even so, most of the meat that is eaten there is consumed in the hotels
by the foreigners who visit the country.
In looking over the budgets of a number of the small landowners, whose
position is much better than that of the average farm labourer, I found
that as much as $5 was spent for wine, while the item for meat was
only $2 per year. There are thousands of people in Sicily, I learned,
who almost never taste meat. The studies which have been made of the
subject indicate that the whole population is underfed.
Upon inquiry I found it to be generally admitted that the condition of
the population was due to the fact that the larger part of the land was
in the hands of large landowners, who have allowed the ignorant and
helpless peasants to be crushed by a system of overseers and middlemen
as vicious and oppressive as that which existed in many parts of the
Southern States during the days of slavery.
This middleman is called by Italians a gobellotto, and he seems to
be the only man in Sicily who is getting rich out of the land. If a
gobellotto has a capital of $12,000 he will be able to rent an estate
of 2,500 acres for a term of six to nine years. He will, perhaps, work
only a small portion of this land himself and sublet the remainder.
Part of it will go to a class of farmers that correspond to what are
known in the South as "cash renters." These men will have some stock,
and, perhaps, a little house and garden. In a good season they will be
able to make enough to live upon and, perhaps, save a little money. If
the small farmer is so unfortunate, however, as to have a bad season;
if he loses some of his cattle or is compelled to borrow money or seed,
the middleman who advances him is pretty certain to "clean him up," as
our farmers say, at the end of the season. In that case, he falls into
the larger and more unfortunate class beneath him, which corresponds
to what we call in the Southern States the "share cropper." This man,
corresponding to the share cropper, is supposed to work his portion
of land on half-shares, but if, as frequently happens, he has been
compelled to apply to the landlord during the season for a loan, it
goes hard with him on the day of settlement. For example, this is the
way, according to a description that I received, the crop is divided
between the landlord and his tenants: After the wheat has been cut and
thrashed--thrashed not with a machine, nor yet perhaps with flails,
but with oxen treading the sheaves on a dirt floor--the gobellotto
subtracts from the returns of the harvest double, perhaps triple,
measure of the seed he had advanced. After that, according to the local
custom, he takes a certain portion for the cost of guarding the field
while the grain is ripening, since no man's field is safe from thieves
in Sicily.
Then he takes another portion for the saints, something more for the
use of the threshing floor and the storehouse and for anything else
that occurs to him. Naturally he takes a certain portion for his other
loans, if there have been any, and for interest. Then, finally, if
there is nothing further to be subtracted, he divides the rest and
gives the farmer his half.
As a result the poor man who, as some one has said, "has watered the
soil with his sweat," who has perhaps not slept more than two hours a
night during the harvest time, and that, too, in the open field, is
happy if he receives as much as a third or a quarter of the grain he
has harvested.
In the end the share cropper sinks, perhaps, still lower into the ranks
of day labourer and becomes a wanderer over the earth, unless, before
he reaches this point, he has not sold what little property he had and
gone to America.
I remember meeting one of these outcasts and wornout labourers, who had
become a common beggar, tramping along the road toward Catania. He
carried, swung across his back in a dirty cloth of some indescribable
colour, a heavy pack. It contained, perhaps, some remnants of his
earthly goods, and as he stopped to ask for a penny to help him on his
way, I had a chance to look in his face and found that he was not the
usual sort. He did not have the whine of the sturdy beggars I had been
accustomed to meet, particularly in England. He was haggard and worn;
hardship and hunger had humbled him, and there was a beaten look in his
eyes, but suffering seemed to have lent a sort of nobility to the old
man's face.
I stopped and talked with him and managed to get from him some account
of his life. He had been all his life a farm labourer; he could neither
read nor write, but looked intelligent. He had never married and was
without kith or kin. Three years before he had gotten into such a
condition of health, he said, that they wouldn't let him work on the
farm any more, and since that time he had been wandering about the
country, begging, and living for the most part upon the charity of
people who were almost as poor as he.
I asked him where he was going. He said he had heard that in Catania an
old man could get a chance to sweep the streets, and he was trying to
reach there before nightfall.
Several hours later, in returning from the country, I turned from the
highway to visit the poorer districts of the city. As I turned into one
of the streets which are lined with grimy little hovels made of blocks
hewn from the great black stream of lava which Mt. Ætna had poured over
that part of the city three hundred and fifty years before, I saw the
same old man lying in the gutter, with his head resting on his bundle,
where he had sunken down or fallen.
I have described at some length the condition of the farm labourers
in Italy because it seems to me that it is important that those who
are inclined to be discouraged about the Negro in the South should
know that his case is by no means as hopeless as that of some others.
The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured
farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States in America,
even where he has the least education and the least encouragement,
is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the
agricultural population in Sicily.
The Negro farmer sometimes thinks he is badly treated in the South. Not
infrequently he has to pay high rates of interest upon his "advances"
and sometimes, on account of his ignorance, he is not fairly treated
in his yearly settlements. But there is this great difference between
the Negro farmer in the South and the Italian farmer in Sicily: In
Sicily a few capitalists and descendants of the old feudal lords own
practically all the soil and, under the crude and expensive system of
agriculture which they employ, there is not enough land to employ the
surplus population. The result is the farm labourers are competing for
the privilege of working on the land. As agriculture goes down and the
land produces less, the population increases and the rents go up. Thus
between the upper and the nether millstone the farmer is crushed.
In the South we have just the contrary situation. We have land crying
for the hand to till it; we have the landowners seeking labour and
fairly begging for tenants to work their lands.
If a Negro tenant does not like the way he is treated he can go to the
neighbouring farm; he can go to the mines or to the public works, where
his labour is in demand. But the only way the poor Italian can get free
is by going to America, and that is why thousands sail from Palermo
every year for this country. In certain places in Sicily, in the three
years including 1905 and 1907, more than four persons in every hundred
of the population left Sicily for America.
One thing that keeps the Sicilian down is the pride with which he
remembers his past and the obstinacy with which he clings to his
ancient customs and ways of doing things. It is said by certain
persons, as an excuse for backward conditions of the country, that even
if the landlords did attempt to introduce new machinery and modern
methods of cultivation the people would rebel against any innovation.
They are stuck so fast in their old traditional ways of doing things
that they refuse to change.
I have sometimes said that there was a certain advantage in belonging
to a new race that was not burdened with traditions and a past--to a
race, in other words, that is looking forward instead of backward, and
is more interested in the future than in the past. The Negro farmer
certainly has this advantage over the Italian peasant.
If you ask a Sicilian workman why he does something in a certain way,
he invariably replies: "We have always done that way," and that is
enough for him. The Sicilian never forgets the past until he leaves
Sicily, and frequently not even then.
The result is that while the Negro in Africa is learning, as I saw
from a recent report of the German Government, to plow by steam, the
Sicilian farmer, clinging proudly to his ancient customs and methods,
is still using the same plow that was used by the Greeks in the days
of Homer, and he is threshing his grain as people did in the time of
Abraham.
CHAPTER IX
WOMEN AND THE WINE HARVEST IN SICILY
It was late in September when I reached Catania, on the eastern side of
Sicily. The city lies at the foot of Mt. Ætna on the edge of the sea.
Above it looms the vast bulk of the volcano, its slopes girdled with
gardens and vineyards that mount, one terrace above the other, until
they lose themselves in the clouds. A wide and fertile valley below the
city to the south, through which the railway descends from the mountain
to the sea, seemed, as did Mt. Ætna itself, like one vast vineyard.
This was the more noticeable and interesting because, at the time I
reached there, the harvest was in progress; the vineyards were dotted
with women carrying baskets; the wine presses were busy, and the air
was filled with the fumes of the fermenting grape juice.
Although it was Sunday morning and the bells in a hundred churches were
calling the people to prayers, there was very little of the Sunday
quiet I had somehow expected to meet. Most of the shops were open; in
every part of the city men were sitting in their doorways or on the
pavement in front of their little cell-like houses, busily at work
at their accustomed crafts. Outside the southern gate of the city a
thrifty merchant had set up a hasty wine shop, in order to satisfy
the thirst of the crowds of people who were passing in and out of
the city and also, perhaps, to escape the tax which the city imposes
upon all sorts of provisions that enter the city from the surrounding
country. Country wine was selling here at a few pennies a litre--I have
forgotten the exact sum--and crowds of people from the city celebrated,
something after the ancient custom of the country, I suppose, the
annual harvest of the grapes.
Out of the southern gate of the city, which leads into the fertile
vine-clad plain, a dusty and perspiring procession--little two-wheeled
carts, beautifully carved and decorated, carrying great casks of grape
juice, little donkeys with a pigskin filled with wine on either flank
and a driver trotting along beside them--pushed and crowded its way
into the city. At the same time a steady stream of peasants on foot,
or city people in carriages, mingling with the carts and pack-animals,
poured out of the gate along the dusty highway, dividing and dwindling,
until the stream lost itself among the cactus hedges that mark the
winding country roads.
It was to me a strange and interesting sight and, not only on this
particular Sunday but afterward, almost every day I was in the city, in
fact, I spent some time studying this procession, noting the different
figures and the different types of which it was made up. It was at this
gate that I observed one day a peasant woman haggling with the customs
officer over the tax she was to pay for the privilege of bringing her
produce to town. She was barefoot and travel-stained and had evidently
come some distance, carrying her little stock of fruit and vegetables
in a sack slung across her back. It seemed, however, that she had
hidden, in the bottom of the sack, a few pounds of nuts, covering them
over with fruit and vegetables. Something in her manner, I suppose,
betrayed her, for the customs officer insisted on thrusting his hand
down to the very bottom of the little sack and brought up triumphantly,
at last, a little handful of the smuggled nuts. I could not understand
what the woman said, but I could not mistake the pleading expression
with which she begged the officer to let her and her little produce
through because, as she indicated, showing him her empty palms, she did
not have money enough to pay all that he demanded.
I had heard and read a great deal about the hardships and cruelties of
the tariff in America, but I confess that the best argument for free
trade that I ever met was that offered by the spectacle of this poor
woman, with her little store of fruit and nuts, trying to get to market
with her goods.
Not far outside the city the highway runs close beside a cemetery.
From the road one can see the elegant and imposing monuments that
have been erected to mark the final resting places of the wealthy and
distinguished families of the city. The road to this cemetery passes
through a marble archway which is closed, as I remember, by massive
iron gates. Standing by this gate, I noticed one day a young peasant
woman silently weeping. She stood there for a long time, looking out
across the fields as if she were waiting for some one who did not come,
while the tears streamed down her face. She seemed so helpless and
hopeless that I asked the guide who was with me to go across the street
and find out what her trouble was. I thought there might perhaps be
something that we could do for her.
The guide, with the natural tact and politeness of his race, approached
the woman and inquired the cause of her grief. She did not move or
change expression, but, while the tears still streamed down her face,
pointed to a pair of high-heeled slippers which she had taken off and
placed beside her on the ground.
"They hurt my feet," she said, and then smiled a little, for she, too,
saw that there was a certain element of humour in the situation. I
looked at her feet and then at her shoes and made up my mind that I
could not help her.
Farther on we passed some of the large estates which are owned
generally by some of the wealthy landed proprietors in the city. The
corresponding region outside of Palermo is occupied by orange and lemon
groves, but around Catania all the large estates, apparently, are given
up to the culture of the vine.
A large vineyard in the autumn or the time of the grape harvest
presents one of the most interesting sights I have ever seen. The
grapes, in thick, tempting clusters, hang so heavy on the low vines
that it seems they must fall to the ground of their own weight.
Meanwhile, troops of barefooted girls, with deep baskets, rapidly strip
the vines of their fruit, piling the clusters in baskets. When all
the baskets are full, they lift them to their heads or shoulders and,
forming in line, march slowly in a sort of festal procession in the
direction of the wine press.
At the plantation which I visited the wine house was a large, rough
building, set deep in the ground, so that one was compelled to descend
a few steps to reach the ground floor. The building was divided so that
one room contained the huge casks in which the wine was stored in order
to get with age that delicate flavour that gives it its quality, while
in the other the work of pressing the grapes was carried on.
There was at one side of the room a press with a great twisted arm of
a tree for a lever, but this was only used, I learned, for squeezing
dry the refuse, from which a poorer and cheaper sort of wine was made.
Directly in front as one entered the building, and high up under the
roof, there was a huge, round, shallow tub-like vat. In this vat four
or five men, with their trousers rolled up above their knees and their
shoes and stockings on, were trotting about in a circle, and, singing
as they went, tramping the grapes under their feet.
Through an open space or door at the back I caught a glimpse now and
then of the procession of girls and men as they mounted the little
stairs at the back of the wine house to pour fresh grapes into the
press. In the light that came in through this opening the figures of
the men trampling the grapes, their bare legs stained with wine, stood
out clear and distinct. At the same time the fumes which arose from the
grapes filled the wine house so that the air, it almost seemed, was
red with their odour. It is said that men who work all day in the wine
press not infrequently become intoxicated from merely breathing the air
saturated with this fermenting grape juice.
I imagine that the harvest season has always been, in every land and in
every time, a period of rejoicing and gladness. I remember it was so
among the slaves on the plantation when I was a boy. As I watched these
men and listened to the quaint and melancholy little songs they sang,
while the red wine gushed out from under their trampling feet, I was
reminded of the corn-huskings among the slaves, and of the songs the
slaves sang at those times.
I was reminded of it the more as I noticed the way in which the leader
in the singing bowed his head and pressed his temples, just as I have
seen it done before by the one who led the singing at the corn-husking.
I recall that, as a boy, the way this leader or chorister bowed his
head and pressed his hands against his temples made a deep impression.
Perhaps he was merely trying in this way to remember the words, but it
seemed as if he was listening to music that welled up inside of him,
seeking in this way, not merely to recall the words, but catch the
inspiration of the song. Sometimes, after he had seemed to listen this
way for a few minutes, he would suddenly fling back his head and burst
into a wilder and more thrilling strain.
All this was strangely interesting and even thrilling to me, the more
so, perhaps, because it seemed somehow as if I had seen or known all
this somewhere before. Nevertheless, after watching these men, stained
with wine and sweat, crushing the grapes under shoed and stockinged
feet, I had even less desire to drink wine than ever before. It perhaps
would not have been so bad if the men had not worn their socks.
One thing that impressed me in all that I saw was the secondary and
almost menial part the women took in the work. They worked directly
under an overseer who directed all their movements--directed them,
apparently, with a sharp switch which he carried in his hand. There was
no laughter or singing and apparently little freedom among the women,
who moved slowly, silently, with the weary and monotonous precision in
their work I have frequently noted in gang labour. They had little if
any share in the kind of pleasurable excitement which helped to lighten
the work of the men.
Once or twice every year, at the time of the grape and olive harvests,
the girls and women come down from their mountain villages to share
with the men in the work of the fields. For these two brief periods,
as I understand it, the women of each one of these little country
villages will be organized into a gang, just as is true of the gangs of
wandering harvesters in Austria and Hungary. I had seen, on the Sunday
I arrived in Catania, crowds of these women trooping, arm in arm,
through the streets of the city. A party of them had, in fact, encamped
on the pavement in the little open square at the southern gate of the
city. They were there nearly all day and, I suppose, all night, also. I
was interested to observe the patience with which they sat for hours on
the curb or steps, with their heads on their bundles, waiting until the
negotiations for hiring them were finished.
This brief period of the harvest time is almost the only opportunity
that the majority of these country women have to get acquainted with
the outside world. For the remainder of the year, it seems, they are
rarely allowed to venture beyond the limits of the street or village in
which they live.
In the course of my journey across the island I had seen, high up in
the mountains, some of these inaccessible little nests from which,
perhaps, these girls had come. In one or two cases, and especially at
the time I visited the sulphur mines, I had an opportunity to see
something of the life of these mountain villages. Now that I have come
to speak especially of the women of the labouring and agricultural
classes, I may as well tell here what I saw and learned of the way they
live in their homes.
Such a village as I have referred to consists, for the most part, of
rows of low, one-story stone buildings, ranged along a street that is
dirty beyond description. The wells are frequently built without mortar
or plaster, and roofed sometimes with wood, but more frequently with
tiles. In a corner there is a stone hearth upon which the cooking is
done, when there is anything to cook. As there is no chimney, the smoke
filters out through the roofing.
I remember well a picture I saw in passing one such house. In front of
the house a woman was standing holding in her arms a perfectly naked
child. Another child, with nothing on but a shirt, was standing beside
her holding her skirt. Through the open door I could see the whole of
the single room in which this family lived. Back of the living-room and
connected with it was a stall for the cattle. This was typical of many
other homes that I saw.
During the day the women, the children, the pigs, and the chickens
spend most of their time in the dirty, crowded street. As a rule the
men, unless they are engaged in some sort of handicraft, are away in
the fields at work. In many cases they do not come home once a month.
In my journeys through these villages and the poor streets of the
larger cities one question constantly arose in my mind for which I
was never able to find an answer. It was this: What becomes of these
people, together with their pigs, goats, chickens, and other animals,
at night? How does the interior of these homes look after sundown?
I have gone through some of the poorer streets of Catania at night, but
invariably found them in almost total darkness. I could hear the people
talking as they sat in their doorways, but I could not see them. In
fact, I could not see anything but the dim outlines of the buildings,
because nowhere, apparently, were there any lights.
A German author, Mr. S. Wermert, who has studied conditions closely
in Sicily, and has written a great book on the social and economic
conditions of the people, says, in regard to the way the people live in
the little villages:
"In the south, as is well known, people live for the most part
out of doors. Every one sits in the street before the house door;
there the craftsman works at his trade; there the mother of the
family carries on her domestic labours. At evening, however,
all crowd into the cave, parents and children, the mule or the
donkey. The fattening pig, which, decorated with a collar, has
been tied during the day in front of the house, where, with all
the affection of a dog, it has glided about among the children,
must also find a place in the house. The cock and hens betake
themselves at sunset into this same space, in which the air is
thick with smoke, because there is no chimney to the house. All
breathe this air. One can imagine what a fearful atmosphere
pervades the place. Every necessity of physical cleanliness and
moral decency is lacking. In the corner there is frequently only
one bunk, upon which the entire family sleeps, and for the most
part it consists of nothing more than a heap of straw. In the
fierce heat of the summer one naturally sleeps without a cover;
in winter every one seeks to protect himself under the covers.
Even when there are separate sleeping places all the most intimate
secrets of family life become known to the children at an early
age. Brothers and sisters almost always sleep in the same bed.
Frequently a girl sleeps at the feet of her parents. The stupidity
and coarseness of such a family existence is beyond description.
There is naturally no such thing as a serious conception of
morality among a people that for generations has grown up without
education. For that reason, it frequently happens that the most
unspeakable crimes are committed. It is, therefore, frequently
difficult to determine with exactness the parentage of the
children born into the family. The saying of the Romans, that
'paternity is always uncertain,' holds good here. In fact, it
is quite possible that this legal conception owes its origin to
observations in regard to the condition of the rural population
of that period. It is, however, probable that in the country
districts of Sicily conditions have changed very little since
Roman times."
From all that I can learn, the filthy promiscuity of these crowded
houses and dirty streets have made the Sicilian rural villages breeding
places of vices and crimes of a kind of which the rural Negro
population in the United States, for example, probably never heard.
There are some things, in connection with this ancient civilization,
concerning which it is better the Negro should not know, because the
knowledge of them means moral and physical degeneration, and at the
present time, whatever else may be said about the condition of the
Negro, he is not, in the rural districts at least, a degenerate. Even
in those parts of the Southern States where he has been least touched
by civilization, the Negro seems to me to be incomparably better off in
his family life than is true of the agricultural classes in Sicily.
The Negro is better off in his family, in the first place, because,
even when his home is little more than a primitive one-room cabin, he
is at least living in the open country in contact with the pure air and
freedom of the woods, and not in the crowded village where the air and
the soil have for centuries been polluted with the accumulated refuse
and offscourings of a crowded and slatternly population.
In the matter of his religious life, in spite of all that has been said
in the past about the ignorance and even immorality of certain of the
rural Negro preachers, I am convinced, from what I learned while I was
in Sicily, that the Negro has a purer type of religion and a better
and more earnest class of ministers than is true of the masses of these
Sicilian people, particularly in the country districts.
In this connection, it should not be forgotten also that the Negro is
what he is because he has never had a chance to learn anything better.
He is going forward. The people of Sicily, who have been Christians
almost since the time that the Apostle Paul landed in Syracuse, have,
on the other hand, gone backward. All kinds of barbarous superstitions
have grown up in connection with their religious life and have crowded
out, to a large extent, the better elements.
While the condition of Negro education in the Southern States is by
no means perfect, the Negro, and particularly the Negro woman, has
some advantages which are so far beyond the reach of the peasant girl
in Sicily that she has never dreamed of possessing them. For example,
every Negro girl in America has the same opportunities for education
that are given to Negro boys. She may enter the industrial school, or
she may, if she choose, as she frequently does, go to college. All the
trades and the professions are open to her. One of the first Negro
doctors in Alabama was a woman. Every year there are hundreds and,
perhaps, thousands of Negro girls who go up from the farming districts
of the Southern States to attend these higher schools, where they have
an opportunity to come under the influence of some of the best and most
cultivated white people in the United States. In the country villages,
I venture to say, not one girl in a hundred ever learns so much as to
read and write.
I was much impressed, as I went about in Sicily, with the substantial
character of the buildings and improvements, such as they were.
Everything is of stone. Even the most miserable house is built as if it
were expected to last for centuries, and an incredible amount of labour
has been spent everywhere throughout the country in erecting stone
walls.
One reason for this is that there is almost no wood to be had for
building. Everything is necessarily built of stone and tiles. Another
reason, I suspect, why Sicilian people build permanently is because
they never expect any change in their condition. If one asks them
why they have built their villages on the most inconvenient and
inaccessible places, they do not know. They know only that these towns
have always been there and they haven't the least idea but what they
will remain always where they are. As a matter of fact, in order to
find an explanation for the location of these towns, students, I
learned, have had to go back several centuries before Christ to the
time when the Greeks and the Phoenicians were contending for the
possession of the island. At that time the original population took
refuge in these mountain fastnesses, and through all the changes since,
these towns, with, perhaps, some remnants of the race that originally
inhabited the island, have remained.
Everywhere in Sicily one is confronted with the fact that he is among
a people that is living among the ruins and remains of an ancient
civilization. For example, in seeking to understand the difference in
the position of women in Sicily from that of other parts of Europe I
learned that one had to go back to the Greeks and the Saracens, among
whom women held a much lower position and were much less free than
among the peoples of Europe. Not only that, but I met persons who
professed to be able to distinguish among the women Greek and Saracen
types. I remember having my attention called at one time to a group
of women, wearing very black shawls over their heads, who seemed more
shrinking and less free in their actions than other women I had seen
in Sicily. I was informed that these women were of the Saracen type
and that the habit of wearing these dark shawls over their heads and
holding them tight under their chins was a custom that had come from
the Arabs. The shawls, I suppose, took the place in a sort of way of
the veils worn by Oriental women.
Now all these ancient customs and habits, and all the quaint
superstitions with which life among the ignorant classes is overgrown,
have, I suppose, the same kind of interest and fascination as some of
the ancient buildings. But very few people realize, I am convinced, to
what degree these ancient customs weigh upon the people, especially the
women, and hinder their progress.
In the midst of these conditions the Sicilian women, who are looked
upon by the men as inferior creatures and guarded by them as a species
of property, live like prisoners in their own villages. Bound fast,
on the one hand, by age-long customs, and on the other surrounded by
a wall of ignorance which shuts out from them all knowledge of the
outer world, they live in a sort of mental and moral slavery under the
control of their husbands and of the ignorant, and possibly vicious,
village priests.
For this reason, the journey to America is for the woman of Sicily a
real emancipation. In fact, I do not know of any more important work
that is going on for the emancipation of women anywhere than that
which is being done, directly and indirectly, through the emigration
from Sicily and Italy to the United States, in bringing liberty of
thought to the women of Southern Italy.
CHAPTER X
THE CHURCH, THE PEOPLE, AND THE MAFIA
One of the interesting sights of Catania, Sicily, as of nearly every
other city I visited in Europe, is the market-place. I confess that
I have a fondness for visiting markets. I like to wander through the
stalls, with their quantities of fruit, vegetables, meat and bread, all
the common, wholesome and necessary things of life, piled and ranged in
bountiful profusion.
I like to watch the crowds of people coming and going, buying
and selling, dickering and chaffering. A market, particularly an
old-fashioned market, such as one may see almost anywhere in Europe,
in which the people from the town and the people from the country,
producer and consumer, meet and bargain with each other, seems a much
more wholesome and human place than, for example, a factory. Besides
that, any one who goes abroad to see people rather than to see things
will, I believe, find the markets of Europe more interesting and more
instructive than the museums.
During my journey across Europe I visited the markets in nearly every
large city in which I stopped. I saw something of the curious Sunday
markets of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, London, with their long lines
of shouting hucksters and their crowds of hungry shoppers, and the
Jewish market in the Ghetto of Cracow, Poland, where pale-faced rabbis
were slaughtering, according to the strict ritual of the Jewish law,
droves of squawking geese. Among others, I visited the Monday market
in Catania, which differs from the markets I had seen elsewhere in the
multitudes of articles of household manufacture offered for sale, and
in the general holiday character of the proceedings.
It was like a country fair in one of our Southern cities, only cruder
and quainter. For example, instead of the familiar shooting gallery,
with painted targets, one enterprising man had set up a dozen painted
sticks on a rough box, and offered to the public, for something
less than a cent, the opportunity to shoot at them with an ancient
cross-bow, such as I did not imagine existed outside of museums. Then
there were all sorts of curious and primitive games of chance. Among
other devices for entertaining and mystifying the people I noticed a
young woman seated in a chair, blindfolded. A crowd surrounded her
while she named various objects belonging to the crowd, which her
companion, a man, held in his hands. At the same time she told the
colour of the hair and eyes, and reeled off a prophecy in regard to the
future of the different persons to whom the article belonged.
More interesting still were the public story-tellers, who seemed to
take the place, to a certain extent, of the daily newspaper among the
masses of the people, so many of whom can neither read nor write.
The story-tellers stood upon little platforms, which they carried about
with them like portable pulpits, in order that they might be plainly
visible to the crowd. Each carried a large banner on which were painted
a series of pictures representing the scenes in the stories which they
told.
These stories, together with the pictures which illustrated them, had
apparently been composed by the men who told them, for they all touched
upon contemporary events. In fact, most of them referred in some way to
America. Like those songbirds that have only one constantly repeated
note, each story-teller had but one story, which he told over and over
again, in the same tones, with the same attitudes, and same little
dramatic surprises.
Although I was not able to understand what was said, it was not
difficult to follow the narrative from the pictures. One story told
the fortunes of a young girl who had been lured away to America.
Perhaps she was one of those "white slaves" to which I noticed a good
many references in Italy, and in other of the emigrant countries. At
any rate, she was imprisoned in a very dark and dismal place in some
part of New York which I was not able to locate from the picture. Then
her brother, or perhaps it was her lover, whom she had left behind in
Sicily, saw a vision. It was a vision of St. George and the dragon,
and after seeing this vision he rose up and went to America and
rescued her. The touching thing about it all, the thing that showed
how realistic this whole tale was to the crowd that stood and listened
to it in rapt attention, was that when the story reached the point
where the picture of St. George and the dragon is referred to, the men
simultaneously raised their hats. At the same time the speaker assumed
a more solemn tone, and the crowd listened with a reverential awe while
he went on to relate the miracle by which the young woman had been
saved.
The sight of this crowd of people, standing bareheaded in an open
square, listening reverentially to the story of a street fakir, struck
me, like so much else that I saw of the life of the common people in
Catania and elsewhere in Sicily, as strangely touching and pathetic.
It reminded me of all that I had read and heard of the superstitions
of the common people of the country and gave me as insight, such as
I had not had before, into the way in which the masses of the people
feel toward the Catholic Church, with all its religious ceremonies and
symbols. It led me to suspect, also, that much in the religious life
of the Sicilian people which looks, perhaps, to those who have had a
different training, like superstition, is in fact merely the natural
expression of the reverence and piety of a simple-minded and, perhaps,
an ignorant people.
I was told, while I was in that city, that Catania has two hundred
and fifty churches, and though I do not know that this statement is
correct, I could easily believe it from the interminable clanging
church bells that smote upon my ears the first Sunday morning I was
in the city. At any rate, no one can go through the city and look at
the public buildings, or study the people in their homes, without
meeting abundant evidence of the all-pervading influence of the Church.
Everywhere, built into the buildings, on the street corners, and in
every possible public place, one sees little images of the Virgin, with
perhaps a burning lamp before them. Once I ran across one such image,
with a lamp before it, planted in a field. I was told it was there to
protect the crops from the influence of evil spirits.
It did not seem to have occurred to any one that the image of the
Virgin and the blessing of the Church, which were intended to protect
the fields from evil spirits, might protect them also from thieves, or
banish from the community the evil spirits that inspired men to rob
and steal. If this opinion had been very widely held among the masses
of the people it would hardly have been necessary to guard the fields
night and day during the harvest season, by men armed with shotguns.
This brings me to another point in which I should like to compare the
masses of the Sicilian people with the masses of the Negroes in the
Southern States--namely, in respect to their religious life.
Naturally, the first thing that strikes one, in attempting to make such
a comparison, is the wide difference in the situation of the average
black man in the Southern States and the corresponding class in Sicily.
In all the externals of religious life, at least, the Sicilian is far
ahead of the Negro.
Sicily was one of the first countries in the world in which
Christianity was planted. St. Paul stopped three days in Syracuse on
his way to Rome, and there is still standing a building in Catania in
which St. Peter is said to have preached.
Sicily has inherited the traditions, the organization and the splendid
churches and buildings which have grown up and accumulated through a
thousand years and more. The black man, on the contrary, gained his
first knowledge of Christianity in slavery and in a very imperfect
and unsatisfactory form. It is only since freedom came that the Negro
church has had an opportunity to extend and establish its influence
among the masses of the people, while out of their poverty Negroes,
who are even yet struggling to build and own their own homes, and
so establish family life, have had to build churches and training
schools for their ministers, to establish a religious press, to
support missionary societies and all the other aids and accessories of
organized religion.
In view of the wide difference between the people of Sicily and the
Negroes in America, so far as concerns the external side of their
religious life, it struck me as curious that I should hear almost
exactly the same criticism of the people in Sicily, in respect to their
religion, that I have frequently heard of the Negroes in America. A
very large number of the popular superstitions of Sicily, what we
sometimes call the folklore of a country, are very much like many of
the notions that the Negroes are supposed to have imported to America
from Africa. Any one who has listened to any of the older generation
of coloured people tell of the various ways of "working the roots," as
they call it, will learn a great many things that can be almost exactly
duplicated in the popular notions about drugs and philters among the
people of Sicily.
It is said of the Sicilians, among other things, that their
Christianity is saturated with pagan superstitions and that, for the
average Sicilian, religion has no connection with moral life.
In many cases it seems as if the image of the Virgin has become,
among the lower class of people, little more than a fetish, a thing
to conjure with. For example, the peasant who, in order to revenge
himself upon his landlord, and perhaps to compensate himself for what
he believes has been taken from him by fraud or extortion, determines
to rob his landlord's field or flock, will pray before one of these
images, before starting out, for success. If he is really "pious" he
may offer to the saints, in case he is successful, a portion of what he
has stolen. If, however, he fails and is merely superstitious, he will
sometimes curse and revile, or even spit upon, the image to which he
previously prayed.
I have heard that the savages in Africa will sometimes behave in the
same way toward the object of which they have made a fetish, but I have
never heard of anything like that among my own people in the South.
The Negro is frequently superstitious, as most other ignorant people
are, but he is not cynical, and never scoffs at anything which has a
religious significance.
One thing that indicates the large part that religion plays in the
lives of the Sicilian people is the fact that out of the 365 days in
the year 104 are sacred to the Church. The large amounts of money
expended annually by the different cities of Sicily upon processions
and celebrations in honour of the local saints is one of the sources
of complaint made by those who are urging reforms in the local
administrations. They say that the money expended in this way might
better be used in improving the sanitary condition of the cities.
As indicating how little all this religious activity connects itself
with practical and moral life it is stated that, while Sicily supports
ten times as many churches and clergy in proportion to its population
as is true of Germany, for instance, statistics show that it suffers
from eleven times as many murders and crimes of violence. In quoting
these statements I do not intend to suggest a comparison between
the form of religion that prevails in Germany with that in Sicily.
Religion, like everything else in Sicily, is deeply rooted in the past.
It has shared all the changing history of that island, and naturally
reflects the conditions, sentiments, and prejudices of the people.
If the Catholic Church is in any way to blame for the existing
conditions in Sicily it seems to me it is in the fact that during
the long period of years in which the education of the people has
been almost wholly in its hands, the Church has held fast to the old
medieval notion that education was only for the few, and for that
reason has done little or nothing to raise the standard of intelligence
among the masses.
It has been a great mistake on the part of the Church, it seems to
me, to permit it to be said that the Socialists, many of whom are not
merely indifferent but openly opposed to the Church, represent the only
party that has sincerely desired and striven for the enlightenment and
general welfare of the people at the bottom. Such a statement could
not, of course, be so easily made of the Church in its relations to the
masses of the people elsewhere in Italy.
The fact about the Sicilian seems to be, however, not that he is, as is
sometimes said of the Negro, unmoral, but that the moral code by which
he governs himself sometimes makes him a menace to public order.
One of the first things that impressed me, while I was in Sicily, was
the enormous and expensive precautions that were necessary to guard
the fields from thieves. Hundreds of miles of high stone walls have
been erected in different parts of the island to protect property
from vandalism and thieves. In the harvest time it is necessary to
practically garrison the island with armed guards to preserve the
crops. The cost of putting a private policeman in every field and
garden is very heavy, and this expense, which is imposed upon the land,
falls in the long run upon the labourer.
The reason for this condition rests in the conviction, which every farm
labourer shares, that for his long and crushing labour on the land he
does not receive a sufficient wage. In many cases it is likely enough
that he is driven by hunger to steal. Under such circumstances it is
not difficult to understand that stealing soon ceases to be looked
upon as a crime, and seems to be regarded as a kind of enterprise
which is only wrong when it is unsuccessful. But there is something
further, I learned, in the back of the head of almost every Sicilian
which explains many things in the Sicilian character and customs that
strike strangers as peculiar. I refer to what goes in Sicily under
the name of the _omerta_, and is, like some of the customs that exist
in the Southern States, part of the unwritten law of the country. The
principle of this unwritten law is silence. If any one is robbed,
wounded, or injured in any way he remains silent. If the police seek to
find out who is his enemy he will answer, "I do not know."
In some provinces in Sicily it is said to be almost impossible to
arrest and convict criminals, because no one will hesitate to go into
court and perjure himself for a friend. It is considered a point of
honour to do so. On the other hand, to assist the police in any way in
the prosecution of crime is looked upon as a disgrace. The ordinary man
may be a thief, a robber, or a murderer and be forgiven, but there is
no comfort in heaven or earth for the man who betrays a neighbour or a
friend.
Complaint is sometimes made that the coloured people in the Southern
States will protect and conceal those among their number who are
accused of crime. In most cases where that happens I believe it will be
found that the real reason is not the desire to save any one of their
number from a just and deserved punishment, but rather the feeling of
uncertainty, because of what they have heard and seen of lynchings in
different parts of the country, as to whether the accused will have the
benefit of a full and fair investigation in a court of law.
There is among the Negro population of the United States, even though
the administration of the law is almost entirely in the hands of
another race, no settled distrust of the Government and the courts
and no disposition, as is true of the Sicilian, to resort to private
justice and revenge. In spite of the fact that he frequently gets into
trouble with the police and the courts the Negro is, by disposition
at least, the most law-abiding man in the community. I mean by this,
the Negro is never an anarchist, he is not opposed to law as such, but
submits to it when he has committed a crime.
This brings me to another feature of Sicilian life--namely, the Mafia.
I had heard a great deal about the Mafia in Italy, and about the
criminal political organizations in other parts of Italy, before I
came to Europe, and was anxious, if possible, to learn something that
would give me an insight into the local causes and conditions which had
produced them.
One of the professional story-tellers whom I encountered while I was
wandering about in the market in Catania recalled the subject to my
mind. He was retailing to a crowd in the market square a story that
was even more exciting and interesting to me, at least, than the one
which I have already mentioned. It was, in fact, nothing less than an
account of the murders and outrages of the Black Hand in New York City.
At first it struck me as very curious that I should meet in Italy, the
home of the Mafia and the Camorra, a crowd of people in the public
square listening with apparent wonder and awe to an account of the
fabulous crimes and misdeeds of their fellow countrymen in another part
of the world. I had a sort of notion that the Black Hand operations
would be so familiar to Sicilians that they would have no curiosity
about them. It was not so, however, and after I learned that New York
had an Italian population larger than Rome, larger, in fact, than
any Italian city, with the exception of Naples, this did not seem so
strange. There are, as a matter of fact, more than 500,000 Italians in
New York City, and 85 per cent. of them are from southern Italy. Among
this 85 per cent. are very many who belong to the criminal classes. The
result is that the Mafia, under the name of the Black Hand, is probably
as active and, perhaps, as powerful among the Italian population in New
York to-day as it ever was in Italy.
While I was in Palermo I had the place pointed out to me where
Petrosino, the Italian detective from New York, who went to Sicily to
secure the records of some of the noted Italian criminals then living
in America, was shot and killed. Petrosino was killed March 12, 1909.
The killing of this American officer in the streets of Palermo served
to call attention to the number of Black Hand crimes committed by
Italians in this country. During the next nine months after Petrosino's
death it was reported that no less than fifty "Italian killings," as
they were called, took place either in New York City itself or in the
surrounding territory, and from 1906 to 1909, according to statistics
prepared by the New York _World_, of the 112 unexplained murders
committed in and around New York, 54 were those of Italians. This
suggests, at least, the manner in which our own country is affected by
the conditions of the masses in southern Italy and Sicily.
The Mafia, the Black Hand, as it is called in America, is a kind of
institution which is so peculiar and to such an extent the product of
purely local conditions that it seems difficult even for those who know
most about it to explain its existence. One statement which I heard
in regard to the matter was especially interesting to me. It was said
that the condition of mind which made the Mafia possible, the fear and
distrust which divide the masses of the people from the ruling classes
and the Government, was the result of the mingling of the races in the
island; that the Mafia was, in short, Sicily's race problem.
It is certainly true that in no other part of Europe, with the possible
exception of Spain, have the different peoples of Europe and Africa
become so intermingled as they have in this island, which is one of the
natural bridges between Europe and Africa. In addition to the Arabs and
Saracens from Africa, nearly all the races of Europe, Germans, Latins,
Greeks, have all at different times lived and ruled on the island.
Near Palermo, for example, there are still the remnants of a colony of
Albanians, a Slavic people who speak modern Greek, and worship after
the fashion of the Eastern Church, and there are fragments and remnants
of many other races still preserved in different parts of the island.
My own experience has taught me, however, to distrust what I may call
"racial explanations." They are convenient and easy to make, but
too sweeping, and, practically, the effect of them is to discourage
any effort to improve. For example, if some one discovers that the
condition in which a people happens to be found at any given time
is due to race, that it is constitutional, and in the blood, so to
speak, then, of course, there is nothing to do. If, however, it is due
to environment, education may help. The discussion and emphasis on
the fact of race have been made the excuse, in the Southern States,
for a good deal of apathy and indifference in regard to the hopes and
progress of the Negro. In fact, whenever I hear a politician in the
South ask the rhetorical question, "Can the leopard change his spots?"
I usually find that he is opposing the establishment of a Negro school
or is discouraging some other effort to improve the condition of the
Negro people.
The real trouble with explanations of this kind is that as soon as
a man has made up his mind, for example, that a people, or class of
people, belongs to a so-called "inferior race," he is not inclined to
support any kind of experiment, like the building of a school, that may
prove that his explanation was mistaken.
The real reason for the backward condition of Sicily is, in my opinion,
not so much the intermixture of races as the neglect and oppression
of the masses of the people. In 1861, when Sicily became a part of
the Italian Confederation, 90 per cent. of the population were wholly
unable to read or write. This means that at this time the people of
Sicily were not much better off, as far as education is concerned,
than the Negro slaves at the time of emancipation. It has been
estimated that between 5 and 10 per cent. of the slaves could read and
write.
One of the first things the Italian Government attempted to do, after
annexation, was to reorganize the school system of Sicily. But even
under the new Government, and with a compulsory education law on the
statute books, progress has been slow. In 1881, twenty years later,
more than 84 per cent. of the population could neither read nor write,
and as late as 1901, for every hundred inhabitants of school age, more
than seventy were illiterate.
In practically the same period--that is, from 1866 to 1900--the Negro
population in the United States reduced its illiteracy to 44.5 per
cent. of the population of school age, and for every one hundred
Negroes in the Southern States, fifty-two could read and write.
Sicily has three universities, one in each of its three largest cities,
Palermo, Catania, and Messina, but they are for the few, and have in
no way connected themselves with the practical interests and the daily
life of the people. One result of the ignorance of the people is that
in Sicily, where the educational qualifications exclude more persons
than elsewhere from the suffrage, not more than 3.62 persons in every
hundred of the population vote. This is according to statistics, which
go back, however, to 1895.
As near as I can make out, the Mafia seems to have grown up, in the
first place, like the White Caps, the Night Riders, and the lynchers
in our own country, as a means of private vengeance. The people,
perhaps because they despised and hated the Government, preferred to
settle their scores in the old barbaric fashion of private warfare. The
consequence was that the small towns were divided by tribal and family
feuds. Under such circumstances professional outlaws became of service
either for the purposes of attack or defence. From conditions something
like this what is known as the Mafia sprang.
It is said that it was the rich fruit gardens of the "Shell of Gold"
outside of Palermo which gave the Mafia its first secure foothold and
eventually made that city the centre of its activity. In that region
field guards were necessary, in addition to the high walls, to keep
thieves out of the plantations where the golden fruit ripened almost
all the year round. In the course of time these field guards became
associated in a sort of clan or guild. In these guilds the most
enterprising of the guards eventually became the leaders, and ruled
those under them like the tribal chiefs.
Once established, these bands soon dominated the situation. No property
owner dared install a guard without the consent of the chief. If he
did, he was likely to have his trees destroyed or his whole crop
stolen. A guard who was not a member of the band was likely to be
brought down some night with a shot from a hedge. On the other hand,
the mere knowledge that a certain plantation was under the protection
of the Mafia was in itself almost sufficient to insure it from attack,
and this because the Mafia, through all its devious connections with
the lower and criminal classes, was much better able to ferret out and
punish the criminals than the police.
By making himself at the same time useful and feared in the community,
the chief of the Mafia soon began to get his hand in almost everything
that was going on. He found himself called on to settle disputes. He
mixed in politics and was secretly in the employ of rich and powerful
men. In this way the Mafia, which was at bottom largely a criminal
organization, gained in time standing and recognition in the community,
in some respects, not unlike, I imagine, that of Tammany Hall in New
York. When the Mafia, under the name of the Black Hand, reached New
York, however, it seems to have become a criminal organization, pure
and simple.
Those who have studied the history of this peculiar organization much
farther than I have been able to do say that in their opinion the
Mafia, or Black Hand, will not long survive in America because there is
in this country no such oppression of the poor by the rich and no such
hatred and suspicion of the high by the low as is the case in Sicily,
to give it general support. In other words, the Mafia is dependent on
class hatred and class oppression for its existence.
Perhaps I can give some idea of what it is that embitters the poor man
in Sicily, who is without property, education, or opportunity, against
the large property owners, the rich, educated, and ruling class.
It is estimated by the Socialists that in Italy the labouring man pays
54 per cent. of the taxes; business men and the professional classes
pay 34 per cent., while the class which lives upon rents and the income
from investments of various kinds furnishes but 12 per cent. of the
revenues of the state.
Italy has, I think, every kind and method of taxation which has ever
been invented. There is an income tax, which varies between 7½ and
20 per cent., though small incomes of less than one hundred dollars
a year are exempt. The tax on landed property amounts to 30, 40, or
even 50 per cent. In addition to these there is the lottery, the state
monopolies, the stamp tax and dog tax. Finally the municipal taxes
on all kinds of foodstuffs which are brought into the town. This tax
absorbs from 20 to 30 per cent. of the labouring man's income.
All these taxes, direct and indirect, are so arranged that the heaviest
burden falls upon that portion of the community which is least able
to bear it. For example, salt is a Government monopoly in Italy, and
in 1901 the people of Italy paid $15,000 for salt which cost the
Government $1,200 to manufacture. The Italian Government ships salt to
America for the use of the Gloucester fishermen for 50 cents a barrel
of 280 pounds, or five and three-fifth pounds for a cent. This same
salt costs the Italian, because of the monopoly of the Government, 4
cents a pound--that is to say, twelve times what it costs in America.
In order to protect this monopoly the Government even goes so far as
to station guards along the whole seacoast to prevent people from
"stealing" sea water in buckets, to obtain salt.
Fortunately the state monopoly of salt does not extend to Sicily, but
the principle of taxing the people according to their necessities,
rather than according to their ability to pay, is the same there as
elsewhere in Italy. As an illustration of the unfair way in which
the taxes are levied in some parts of the country it is said that
the donkey of the poor farmer is compelled to pay a tax, while the
saddle-horse of the rich landlord goes free.
In comparison with this, the Negro in the South hardly knows what taxes
are. The Negro farmer, for example, has an inexhaustible market for his
cotton, corn, pork, and vegetables, and all the other farm vegetables
that he can raise. Land is so cheap that a thrifty farmer can buy and
pay for a farm within five or six years. Taxes on farm land are so low
that the farmer hardly considers them in his yearly budget.
Poor as some of the Negro schools are in some parts of the South, they
are vastly better and more numerous than those of the country people
in Sicily. More than that, the Government puts no tax either on rain
or sunshine, and the Negro in the Southern States has plenty of both,
which is not true of the Sicilian farmer, who has too much sunshine
and not enough rain. So much is the farmer in Sicily in need of water
that at certain times in the year it is said that wine is cheaper than
water. Finally, the Negro farmer, if he desires to take a load of
produce to the town, does not, as is the case of the Sicilian, meet
a policeman on the outskirts of the city who takes one fifth of his
cotton, corn, eggs, or whatever he happens to have, away from him,
before he will allow him to enter the town.
One day, while I was walking along the edge of the harbour in Catania,
I noticed a man who was at work mending a high wire netting, about
twenty or thirty feet high, which extended along the edge of the water.
I saw that it extended as far as I could see. Upon inquiry I learned
that it was placed there to prevent the fishermen, whom I noticed
constantly coming and going with their little sailing boats, from
bringing their fish into the city without paying the tax.
At the custom house, where the fishermen land, I observed one of these
fishermen, who had landed with a small quantity of fish, which he
was carrying to the market nearby, stop and fumble in his clothes,
trying to find money enough to pay the tariff. When he could not find
sufficient money to pay the sum demanded, he left two small fishes
behind with the collector to cover the amount of the tax.
Fish is the cheapest and most abundant food the poor in the city can
get to eat. The sea, just beyond their doors, is swarming with this
kind of food. Nevertheless the city maintains an expensive army of
officials to collect this miserable little tax upon the necessities of
the poor.
The yearly income of a labourer's family in Catania is about 750 lire,
or $170 a year. Of this amount it has been reckoned that in the way of
taxes upon foodstuffs brought into the city the labourer pays 150 lire,
or one fifth of his whole income.
In spite of all that has been proposed and attempted to improve
conditions in Sicily since that island became a part of the Italian
Confederation, the Government has failed, so far as I can learn, to
gain the confidence, respect, and coöperation of the masses of the
people. Naturally, conditions which have grown up in the course of
hundreds of years and have become fixed in the minds and habits of
all classes of the people cannot be changed suddenly. The farther I
have looked into the situation in Sicily the more I am convinced that,
different as it is in details, the problem of Sicily is fundamentally
the same as that which we have here to face in the Southern States
since the war. It is, in short, a problem of education, and by that I
mean education which seeks to touch, to lift and inspire the man at the
bottom, and fit him for practical daily life.
In this opinion I find that I am in agreement with the members of
the commission which was appointed by the Italian Government in
1896 to investigate the condition of the peasants in southern Italy,
particularly in their relation to the landed proprietors. The report
of the commission, which has been recently made, fills several large
volumes, but the substance of it seems to be, as far as I can learn,
that the root of the evil is in the ignorance of the rural population.
One of the effects of Italian immigration to America will probably be
the establishment of a popular school system for the people on the land.
CHAPTER XI
CHILD LABOUR AND THE SULPHUR MINES
There is one street in Catania, Sicily, which seems to be given over
to the trade and industry of the poorer people of the city. It is not
mentioned in the guide-books, and there is perhaps no reason why it
should be. Nevertheless, there are a great many interesting things to
be seen in that street--strange, quaint, homely things--that give a
stranger intimate glimpses into the life of the people.
For example, on a street corner, tucked away in one of those snug
spaces in which one sometimes finds a crowded fruit-stand, I
discovered, one day, a macaroni factory. Within a space perhaps three
feet wide and ten or twelve feet in length one man and a boy conducted
the whole business of the sale as well as the manufacture of macaroni,
from the raw grain to the completed article of trade. The process, as
it was carried on in this narrow space, was necessarily a simple one.
There was a bag of flour, a box in which to mix the paste, and a press
by which this paste was forced through holes that converted it into
hollow tubes. Afterward these hollow tubes were laid out on a cloth
frame which, because there was no room inside, had been set up in the
street. After leaving this cloth frame the macaroni was hung up on
little wooden forms for inspection and for sale.
One of the most curious and interesting places on the street was an
apothecary's shop in which the apothecary manufactured all his own
drugs, and acted at the same time as the poor man's physician or
medical adviser. This man had never studied pharmacy in a college.
His knowledge of drugs consisted entirely of the traditions and
trade secrets which had come down to him from his predecessor in the
business. His shop was filled with sweet-smelling herbs, gathered
for him by the peasants, and from these he brewed his medicines. The
skeleton of a fish hung over the counter from which medicines were
dispensed, and the shelves behind were filled with many curious and
musty bottles.
The apothecary himself was a very serious person, with a high, pale
forehead and the absorbed air of a man who feels the weight of the
knowledge he carries around with him. All these things, especially
the smell of the herbs, were quite awe-inspiring, and undoubtedly
contributed something to the efficacy of the medicines.
It is a very busy street in which the apothecary, the macaroni
manufacturer, and the others are located. In fact, it seems as if work
never stopped there, for it is full of little shops where men sit in
their doorways or at the open windows until late at night, working
steadily at their various trades, making the things they sell, and
stopping only now and then to sell the things they make. The whole
region is a hive of industry, for it is the neighbourhood where the
artisans live, those skilled workmen who make everything by hand
that, in our part of the world, we have long since learned to make by
machine. In fact, in this street it is possible to get a very good
picture, I suspect, of the way in which trade and industry were carried
on in other parts of Europe before the age of steam.
About nine o'clock Saturday night--the night upon which I arrived in
Catania--I was walking down one of the side streets in this part of the
city, when my attention was attracted to a man, sitting in his doorway,
working by the light of a little smoky lamp. He was engaged in some
delicate sort of iron work, and, as near as I could make out, he seemed
to be a tool-maker.
What particularly attracted my attention was a little girl, certainly
not more than seven years of age, who was busily engaged in polishing
and sharpening the stamps he used. I stopped for a moment and watched
this man and child, working steadily, silently, at this late hour of
the night. I could but marvel at the patience and the skill the child
showed at her work. It was the first time in my life that I had seen
such a very little child at work, although I saw many others in the
days that followed.
I have often heard it said that people who are born under the soft
southern skies are habitually indolent, and never learn to work there,
as they do in more northern latitudes. This is certainly not true of
Sicily, for, so far as my experience goes, there is no other country in
Europe where incessant labour is so largely the lot of the masses of
the people. Certainly there is no other country where so much of the
labour of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan as well as the
rough labour of digging and carrying on the streets and in the mines,
is performed by children, especially boys.
There is a law against Sunday labour in Catania, but the next morning,
as I passed through this same quarter of the city, I found the majority
of the people still busily at work. I stopped to watch a man who was
making mandolins. This man lived in one room, which was at the same
time a workshop, kitchen, and bedroom. There was a great heap of
mattresses piled high upon the bed in one corner. A little charcoal
brazier, on which the cooking for the family was performed, stood upon
the workbench. The ceiling was hung with finished instruments, and the
pavement in front of the house was piled with others in various stages
of completion. This room was occupied by a family of five, all of whom,
with the exception of the wife and mother, were engaged, each in their
different ways, in the work of manufacturing mandolins. All the skilled
work (the setting of the decorations and the polishing of the frames)
was performed by the boys, but a little girl who was standing near
seemed to be making herself handy as a helper in the work of the others.
In this treeless country, where there is almost no wood of any
kind to be had, the most useful building material, after stone and
plaster, seems to be tile. Not only the roofs but the floors of most
of the buildings are made of this material, and its manufacture is
consequently one of the principal minor industries of the country. One
day, while I was wandering about in the outskirts of Catania, I ran
across a plant where two men and three little boys were at work mixing
the clay, forming it into octagonal shapes, and piling it out in the
sun to dry. The two men were at work in the shade of a large open shed,
but I could not make out what they were doing. As nearly as I could
see, almost all of the actual work was performed by the children, who
ranged, I should say, from eight to twelve years of age. The work of
carrying the heavy clay, and piling it up in the sun after it had been
formed into tiles, was done by the younger children.
I am certain that if I had not seen them with my own eyes I would never
have believed that such very little children could carry such heavy
loads, or that they could work so systematically and steadily as they
were compelled to do in order to keep pace with the rapid movements of
the older boy, who was molding the tiles from the soft clay. The older
boy could not have been, as I have said, more than twelve years of age,
but he worked with all the skill and the rapidity of an experienced
piece-worker driven at the top of his speed. I was so filled with pity
and at the same time with admiration for this boy that, as I was unable
to speak to him, I ventured to offer him a small coin in token of my
appreciation of the skill with which he worked. So intent was he on his
task, however, that he would not stop his work even to pick up the
money I proffered him, but simply thanked me and nodded his head for me
to place it on the bench beside him.
These instances of skilled labour among children are by no means
exceptional. At another time I remember stopping to look at a little
boy who, it seemed to me, could not be more than eight or nine years of
age, working side by side with a man, evidently his father, together
with several other men, all of them engaged in building a boat. The
boy I speak of was engaged in finishing off with a plane the hardwood
rail of the sides of the boat, and as I watched him at his task I was
again compelled to wonder at the ease and skill with which these little
fellows use their tools.
All these things, as I have said, gave me an idea of the manner in
which the trades were carried on before the extensive use of machinery
had brought the factory system into existence. It showed me also the
easy way in which, in those days, the industrial education of children
was carried on. When the work in the handicrafts was performed in the
house, or in a shop adjoining the house, it was an easy thing for the
father to hand down to the son the trade he himself had practised.
Under the conditions in which trades are carried on in Sicily to-day
children are literally born to the trade which their fathers practise.
In these homes, where the shop and the home are crowded together in one
or two rooms, children see their fathers and mothers at work from the
time they are born. As soon as they are able to handle a tool of any
kind the boys, at any rate, and frequently the girls also, are set to
work helping their parents. As the father, in his turn, has probably
inherited the accumulated traditions and skill of generations that
preceded him in the same trade, his children are able to get from him,
in the easiest and most natural way, an industrial education such as no
other kind of school can give.
Whatever may be the disadvantages of the people of Sicily in other
respects, they have an advantage over the Negro in learning the skilled
trades, the value of which it is difficult to estimate. Everywhere one
sees the evidences of this skill with the hand, not only in the public
buildings, but in some of the common objects of daily use. I have
already referred to the way in which the ordinary little two-wheeled
carts, which take the place of the ordinary farmer's wagon in this
country, are decorated. I have seen in Catania men at work practically
hewing these carts out of the log. I do not know to what extent the
frame of the wagon is hewn out in this way, but, at any rate, the
spokes are. Every detail is worked out with the greatest possible
skill, even to the point of carving little figures or faces at the
ends of the beams that make the frames. Likewise the harness of the
donkeys that draw these carts is an elaborate and picturesque affair
which must require a vast amount of patience and skill to make. The
point I wish particularly to emphasize here is that all this skill in
the handicrafts, which has become traditional in a people, is the best
kind of preparation for every kind of higher education. In this respect
the Italian, like the Japanese and Chinese, as well as every other
race which has had centuries of training in the handicrafts, has an
advantage over the Negro that can only be overcome when the masses of
the Negro people have secured a training of the hand and a skill in the
crafts that correspond to those of other races.
Not only are children, especially boys, employed at a very early age
in all the trades I have mentioned, but young boys from fourteen
to sixteen perform, as I have said, in the mines and elsewhere an
incredible amount of the crude, rough work of the community.
I remember, one day in Palermo, seeing, for the first time in my life,
boys, who were certainly not more than fourteen years of age, engaged
in carrying on their backs earth from a cellar that was being excavated
for a building. Men did the work of digging, but the mere drudgery of
carrying the earth from the bottom of the excavation to the surface was
performed by these boys. It was not simply the fact that mere children
were engaged in this heavy work which impressed me. It was the slow,
dragging steps, the fixed and unalterable expression of weariness that
showed in every line of their bodies. Later I learned to recognize
this as the habitual manner and expression of the _carusi_, which is
the name that the Italians give to those boys who are employed in the
sulphur mines to carry the crude ore up from the mines where it is dug
and to load it into the cars by which it is conveyed to the surface.
The work in a sulphur mine is organized in many respects, I learned,
like that of a coal mine. The actual work of digging the sulphur is
performed by the miner, who is paid by the amount of crude ore he
succeeds in getting out. He, in his turn, has a man or a boy, sometimes
two or three of them, to assist him in getting the ore out of the mine
to the smelter, where it is melted and refined. As I myself had had
some experience as a boy in work similar to this in the mines of West
Virginia, I was interested in learning all I could in regard to these
boys and the conditions under which they worked.
In the case of boys employed for this work, the Sicilians have a custom
of binding out their children to the miner, or _picconiero_, as he is
called. Such a boy is then called, in the language of the country,
a _caruso_. As a matter of fact, a _picconiero_ who buys a boy from
his parents to employ him as a _caruso_ actually purchases a slave.
The manner in which the purchase is made is as follows: In Sicily,
where the masses of the people are so wretchedly poor in everything
else, they are nevertheless unusually rich in children, and, as often
happens, the family that has the largest number of mouths to fill has
the least to put in them. It is from these families that the _carusi_
are recruited. The father who turns his child over to a miner receives
in return a sum of money in the form of a loan. The sum usually amounts
to from eight to thirty dollars, according to the age of the boy, his
strength and general usefulness. With the payment of this sum the child
is turned over absolutely to his master. From this slavery there is no
hope of freedom, because neither the parents nor the child will ever
have sufficient money to repay the original loan.
Strange and terrible stories are told about the way in which these boy
slaves have been treated by their masters. Before coming to Sicily I
had met and talked with persons who described to me the processions
of half-naked boys, their bodies bowed under the heavy weight of the
loads they carried, groaning and cursing as they made their way up out
of the hot and sulphurous holes in the earth, carrying the ore from
the mine to the smelter. All that I had heard elsewhere was confirmed
later by the details furnished by official reports and special studies
of conditions in the mining regions, made at different times and by
different persons. In these reports I learned that the mines had been
in the past the refuge of a debased and criminal population, whose
vices made the bleak, sulphur-smitten region where the mines are
located as much like hell as it looks.
The cruelties to which the child slaves have been subjected, as
related by those who have studied them, are as bad as anything that
was ever reported of the cruelties of Negro slavery. These boy slaves
were frequently beaten and pinched, in order to wring from their
overburdened bodies the last drop of strength they had in them. When
beatings did not suffice, it was the custom to singe the calves of
their legs with lanterns to put them again on their feet. If they
sought to escape from this slavery in flight, they were captured and
beaten, sometimes even killed.
As they climbed out of the hot and poisonous atmosphere of the mines
their bodies, naked to the waist and dripping with sweat, were chilled
by the cold draughts in the corridors leading out of the mines,
and this sudden transition was the frequent cause of pneumonia and
tuberculosis.
In former years children of six and seven years of age were employed at
these crushing and terrible tasks. Under the heavy burdens (averaging
about forty pounds) they were compelled to carry, they often became
deformed, and the number of cases of curvature of the spine and
deformations of the bones of the chest reported was very large. More
than that, these children were frequently made the victims of the lust
and unnatural vices of their masters. It is not surprising, therefore,
that they early gained the appearance of gray old men, and that it
has become a common saying that a _caruso_ rarely reaches the age of
twenty-five.
It was with something of all this in my mind that I set out from
Palermo a little before daylight one morning in September to visit
the mines at Campofranco, on the southern side of the island, in the
neighbourhood of Girgenti. My misgivings were considerably increased
when, upon reaching the railway station to take the train, I found that
the guide and interpreter who had been employed the night before to
accompany us on the trip had not made his appearance. We waited until
all the porters at the station and the guards on the train were fairly
in a fever of excitement in their well-meant efforts to get us and our
baggage on the train. Then, at the last moment, with the feeling that
we were taking a desperate chance, we scrambled aboard and started off
into a wild region, which no guide-book had charted and, so far as I
knew, no tourist had ever visited.
The train carried us for some distance along the fertile plain between
the sea and the hills. It was just possible to make out in the twilight
of the early morning the dim outlines of the little towns we passed. At
length, just as we were able to catch the first gleams of the morning
sun along the crests of the mountains, the railway turned abruptly
southward and the train plunged into a wide valley between the brown
and barren hills.
At Roccapalumba we left the main line of the railway, which turns
eastward from there in the direction of Catania, and continued our
journey with the somewhat ruder comforts of an accommodation train.
From this point on the way grew rougher, the country wilder, and the
only companions of our journey were the rude country folk, with an
occasional sprinkling of miners. At the little town of Lercara we
entered the zone of the sulphur mines. From now on, at nearly every
station we passed, I saw great masses of the bright yellow substance,
piled in cars, waiting to be carried down to the port of Girgenti for
shipment to all parts of the world, and particularly to the United
States, which is still the largest market for this Sicilian gold.
The nearer the train approached our destination, the more uncomfortable
I grew about the prospect that was before us. I felt very sure that I
should be able to reach Campofranco and perhaps see something of the
mines, but whether I should ever be able to get out again and what
would become of me if I were compelled to seek shelter in some of the
unpromising places I saw along the way was very uncertain.
Fortunately, Dr. Robert E. Park, of Boston, who was travelling with me,
and who accompanied me on nearly all of my excursions of this kind, was
with me on this trip. Doctor Park had a pretty thorough mastery of the
German language, and could speak a little French, but no Italian. He
had, however, an Italian grammar in his satchel, and when we finally
found ourselves at sea, in a region where neither English, German, nor
French was of any help to us, he took that grammar from his satchel
and set to work to learn enough Italian between Palermo and Campofranco
to be able to make at least our most urgent wants known. For four hours
he devoted himself industriously to the study of that beautiful and
necessary language. It was a desperate case, and I think I am safe
in saying that Doctor Park studied grammar more industriously during
those four hours than he ever did before in his life. At any rate, by
the time the train had crossed the rocky crest of the mountains which
divide the north and south sides of Sicily, and before we disembarked
at the lonesome little station of Campofranco, he could speak enough
Italian, mixed with German, French, and English, to make himself
understood. Perhaps another reason for Doctor Park's success was the
fact that the Italians understand the sign language pretty well.
The mines at Campofranco are on the slope of the mountain, just above
the railway station. A mile or more across the great empty valley, high
up on the slope of the opposite mountain, is the village from which
the mines get their name, a little cluster of low stone and cement
buildings, clinging to the mountainside as if they were in imminent
danger of slipping into the valley below.
A few hundred yards above the station great banks of refuse had been
dumped into the valley, and a place levelled off on the side of the
mountain, where the furnaces and smelters were located. There were
great rows of kilns, like great pots, half buried in the earth, in
which the ore is melted and then run off into forms, where it is cooled
and allowed to harden.
I confess that I had been very dubious as to the way that we were
likely to be received at the mines, seeing that we did not know the
customs nor the people, and had very scant supply of Italian in which
to make known our wants. The manager, however, who proved to be a very
polite and dignified man, could speak a little French and some English.
He seemed to take a real pleasure in showing us about the works. He
explained the methods by which the sulphur was extracted, insisted upon
our drinking a glass of wine, and was even kind enough to loan me a
horse and guide when I expressed a desire to rent one of the passing
donkeys to convey me to some of the more inaccessible places, farther
up the mountain, where I could see the miners had burrowed into the
earth in search of sulphur. On the vast slope of the mountain and at a
distance they looked like ants running in and out of little holes in
the earth.
It was at the mouth of one of these entrances to the mines that I
got my first definite notion of what sulphur miners look like--those
unfortunate creatures who wear out their lives amid the poisonous fumes
and the furnace heat of these underground hells. There was a rumble
of a car, and presently a man, almost stark naked, stepped out of the
dark passageway. He was worn, haggard, and gray, and his skin had a
peculiar grayish-white tinge. He spoke in a husky whisper, but I do not
know whether that is one of the characteristic effects of the work in
the mines or not. I was told that, in addition to other dangers, the
sulphur has a bad effect upon the lungs. It was explained to me that
the sulphur dust gets into the lungs and clogs them up, and that is
what accounts for the groans of the _carusi_, so frequently spoken of,
when they are tugging up the steep and winding passageways with the
heavy burdens of crude ore on their backs.
It had been many years since I had been in a mine, but as I entered the
dark, damp gallery and felt the sudden underground chill, the memories
of my early experiences all came back to me. As we got farther into
the mine, however, the air seemed to grow warmer. Suddenly a door at
the side of the gallery opened; a blast of hot air, like that from a
furnace, burst out into the corridor, and another of those half-naked
men, dripping with perspiration, stepped out.
We passed at intervals along the main corridor a number of these doors
which, as I discovered, led down into parts of the mine where the men
were at work. It seemed incredible to me that any one could live and
work in such heat, but I had come there to see what a sulphur mine was
like, so I determined to try the experiment.
The side passage which I entered was, in fact, little more than a
burrow, twisting and winding its way, but going constantly deeper and
deeper into the dark depths of the earth. I had known what it was
to work deep down under the earth, but I never before so thoroughly
realized what it meant to be in the bowels of the earth as I did while
I was groping my way through the dark and winding passages of this
sulphur mine.
It is down at the bottom of these holes, and in this steaming
atmosphere, that the miners work. They loosen the ore from the walls of
the seams in which it is found, and then it is carried up out of these
holes in sacks by the _carusi_.
In the mine which I visited the work of getting the ore to the surface
was performed in a modern and comparatively humane way. It was
simply necessary to carry the ore from the different points where it
is mined to the car, by which it is then transported to the smelter.
In those mines, however, where the work is still carried on in the
old, traditional fashion, which has been in vogue as far back as any
one can remember, all the ore is carried on the backs of boys. In
cases where the mine descended to the depth of two, three, or four
hundred feet, the task of carrying these loads of ore to the surface
is simply heartbreaking. I can well understand that persons who have
seen conditions at the worst should speak of the children who have been
condemned to this slavery as the most unhappy creatures on earth.
From all that I can learn, however, the conditions have changed for
the better in recent years. In 1902 a law was passed which forbade the
employment of children under thirteen years in underground work, and to
this was added, a little later, a provision which forbade, after 1905,
the employment of children under fifteen in the mines.
So far as I am able to say, this provision was carried out in the
mine I visited, for I did not see children at work anywhere inside
the mine. I saw a number of the poor little creatures at work in the
dumps outside the mine, however. They were carrying refuse ore in bags
on their backs, throwing it on screens, and then loading the finer
particles back into the cars. Once having seen these gangs of boys at
work, I could never mistake their slow, dragging movements and the
expression of dull despair upon their faces.
It is said that the employment of boys in the sulphur mines is
decreasing. According to law, the employment of children under fifteen
years of age has been forbidden since 1905. As is well known, however,
in Italy as in America, it is much easier to make laws than to enforce
them. This is especially true in Sicily. The only figures which I
have been able to obtain upon the subject show that from 1880 to 1898
there was an enormous increase in the number of children employed in
and about the mines. In 1880 there were 2,419 children under fifteen
years working there, among whom were eight girls. Of this number 88
were seven and 163 were eight years of age, while 12 per cent. of
the whole number were under nine years of age. In 1898, however, the
number of children under fifteen years of age was 7,032, of whom 5,232
were at work inside the mines. At this time the Government had already
attempted to put some restrictions on the employment of children in the
mines, but the age limit had not been fixed as high as fifteen years.
The sulphur mines are located on the southern slopes of the mountains
that cross Sicily from east to west. About ten miles below Campofranco
the two branches of the railway, one running directly south from
Roccapalumba, and the other running southwest from Caltanisetta, come
together a few miles above Girgenti. On the slopes of the broad valleys
through which these two branches of the railway run are located nearly
all the sulphur mines in Sicily. From these mines, which furnish
something like 70 per cent. of the world's supply of sulphur, a
constant stream of this yellow ore flows down to the sea at the port of
Girgenti.
After leaving Campofranco I travelled through this whole region. In
many places the mountain slopes are fairly honeycombed with holes
where the miners in years past have dug their way into the mountain
in search of the precious yellow mineral. For many miles in every
direction the vegetation has been blasted by the poisonous smoke and
vapours from the smelters, and the whole country has a blotched and
scrofulous appearance which is depressing to look upon, particularly
when one considers the amount of misery and the number of human lives
it has cost to create this condition. I have never in my life seen
any place that seemed to come so near meeting the description of the
"abomination of desolation" referred to in the Bible. There is even a
certain grandeur in the desolation of this country which looks as if
the curse of God rested upon it.
I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a
physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about
the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life.
As I have already said, however, there are indications that in the
sulphur mines, as elsewhere in Sicily, the situation of the man
farthest down is improving. I pray God that it is so, for I could not
picture an existence more miserable than the slow torture of this
crushing labour in the hot and poisonous air of these sulphur mines.
Let me say also that I came away from the sulphur mines and from Sicily
with a very much better opinion of the people than when I entered.
I went to Italy with the notion that the Sicilians were a race of
brigands, a sullen and irritable people who were disposed at any
moment to be swept off their feet by violent and murderous passions.
I came away with the feeling that, whatever might be the faults of
the masses of the people, they were, at the very least, more sinned
against than sinning, and that they deserve the sympathy rather than
the condemnation of the world.
The truth is that, as far as my personal experience goes, I was never
treated more kindly in my whole life than I was the day when, coming as
a stranger, without an introduction of any kind, I ventured to visit
the region which has the reputation of being the most wicked, and is
certainly the most unfortunate, in Europe. I mean the region around and
north of Girgenti, which is the seat at once of the sulphur mines and
the Mafia.
If any one had told me before I went to Sicily that I would be willing
to intrust my life to Sicilians away down in the darkness of a sulphur
mine, I should have believed that such a person had lost his mind. I
had read and heard so much of murders of the Mafia in Sicily, that for
a long time I had had a horror of the name of Sicilians; but when I
came in contact with them, before I knew it, I found myself trusting
them absolutely to such an extent that I willingly followed them into
the bowels of the earth; into a hot, narrow, dark sulphur mine where,
without a moment's warning, they might have demanded my life or held
me, if they cared to, for a ransom. Nothing of this kind occurred; on
the other hand, I repeat, every Sicilian with whom I came in contact in
the sulphur mine treated me in the most kindly manner, and I came away
from their country having the highest respect for them.
I did not meet, while I was there, a single person, from the
superintendent to the lowest labourer at the mines, who did not seem,
not only willing, but even anxious, to assist me to see and learn
everything I wanted to know. What is more, Campofranco was the only
place in Europe where I met men who refused to accept money for a
service rendered me.
CHAPTER XII
FIUME, BUDAPEST, AND THE IMMIGRANT
It was a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy day when the little coasting
vessel that was to take us across the Adriatic drew out from the gray
and misty harbour of the ancient city of Ancona and started in the
direction of Fiume, the single point at which the Kingdom of Hungary
touches the sea. I had read of the hardships of the early immigrants,
and I heard once an old coloured man, who had been carried to America
as a slave, tell of the long journey of himself and some fifty others,
all crowded together in a little sailing vessel. It was not, however,
until this trip of a few hours on the Adriatic in a dirty, ill-smelling
little vessel that I began to understand, although I had crossed the
ocean several times, how uncomfortable a sea voyage might be.
Fortunately the journey was not a long one, and after the vessel found
itself in the shelter of one of the beautiful green islands which are
stationed like sentinels along the Dalmatian coast, it was possible to
go on deck and enjoy the view of the rugged and broken coast line. It
was indeed a splendid sight, in the clear light of the late afternoon,
to watch the great blue-gray clouds roll up over the green and
glistening masses of the islands, which lifted themselves on every side
out of the surrounding sea.
What I had heard and read of the Dalmatian coast had led me to look
for the signs of an ancient civilization, not unlike that which I had
left in Italy. What impressed me at first sight about Fiume, however,
was the brand-new and modern character of everything in view. I do not
mean that the city had any of the loose-jointed and straggling newness
of some of our western American towns. It had rather the newness and
completeness of one of those modern German cities, which seem to have
been planned and erected out of hand, at the command of some higher
authority. In that part of Germany which I visited I noticed that
nothing was allowed to grow up naturally, in the comfortable and
haphazard disorder that one finds in some parts of America. This is
particularly true of the cities. Everything is tagged and labelled, and
ordered with military precision. Even the rose-bushes in the gardens
seem to show the effect of military discipline. Trimmed and pruned,
they stand up straight, in long and regular rows, as if they were
continually presenting arms.
The impression which I got of modern Hungary at Fiume was confirmed
by what I saw a few days later at Budapest, the capital. There was
the same air of newness and novelty, as if the city had been erected
overnight, and the people had not yet grown used to it.
A little further acquaintance with the cities of Fiume and Budapest
made it plain, however, in each case, that the new city which filled
the eye of the stranger had been, as a matter of fact, built over, or,
rather, added to, a more ancient one.
In Fiume, for example, somewhat hidden away behind the new buildings
which line the broad avenue of the modern Magyar city, there is still
preserved the outlines of the ancient Italian town, with its narrow,
winding streets, crowded with all the quaint and vivid life, the petty
traffic, and the varied human sights and sounds with which I had become
familiar during my journey through Italy.
So in Budapest, across the river from the modern Hungarian, or, rather,
Magyar city of Pest, there is the ancient German city of Buda, with its
castle and palace, which dates back into the Middle Ages.
What is still more interesting is that in these two modern cities of
Fiume and Pest, in which one sees and feels the impress of a strong
and masterful people, one meets everywhere, in the midst of this
feverish and artificial modern life, evidences of the habit and manners
which belong to an older and simpler age.
For example, it struck me as curious that in a city which is so well
provided with the latest type of electric street cars one should
see peasant women trudging in from the country with heavy loads of
vegetables on their backs; and, in a city where the Government is
seeking to provide modern houses for the labouring classes, with all
the conveniences that invention can supply, one should see these same
peasant women peacefully sleeping on the pavement or under the wagons
in the public square, just as they have been so long accustomed to
sleep, during the harvest times, in the open fields.
In the same way, in another connection, it seemed strange to read
in the report of the Minister of Agriculture that an agricultural
school at Debreczen, which had been carried on in connection with an
agricultural college at the same place, had been closed because "the
pupils of this school, being in daily contact with the first-year
pupils of the college, boarding at the Pallag, attempted to imitate
their ways, wanted more than was necessary _for their future social
position_, and at the same time they aimed at a position they were not
able to maintain."
All this suggests and illustrates the rapidity with which changes
are going on in Hungary and the haste with which the leaders in the
Government and in social life are moving to catch up with and, if
possible, get ahead of the procession of progress in the rest of Europe.
The trouble seems to be that in Hungary progress has begun at the top,
with the Government, instead of at the bottom, with the people. The
Government, apparently, desires and hopes to give the masses of the
people an education that will increase their usefulness, without at the
same time increasing their wants and stimulating their desire to rise.
Its efforts to improve the condition of the masses are further confused
by a determination to suppress the other nationalities and preserve the
domination of the Magyar race. In short, I think I might sum up the
situation by saying that Hungary is trying the doubtful experiment of
attempting to increase the efficiency of the people without giving them
freedom.
The result is that while the Government is closing up the schools
because, as the Minister of Agriculture says, "an important political
and social principle is endangered" when students begin to hope and
dream of a higher and better situation in life than that in which they
were born, the masses of the people are emigrating to America in order
to better their condition.
At Fiume I had an opportunity to study at close range what I may call
the process of this emigration. I had, in other words, an opportunity
to see something, not merely of the manner in which the stream of
emigration, flowing out from the little inland villages, is collected
and cared for at Fiume until it pours into and is carried away in the
ships, but also to get a more definite idea of the motives and social
forces that are working together to bring about this vast migration of
the rural populations of southeastern Europe.
In no country in Europe, not even in Italy, has emigration been so
carefully studied, and in no country has more been done to direct and
control emigration than in Hungary. At the same time I think it is safe
to say that nowhere else has emigration brought so many changes in the
political and social life of the people. At one time, indeed, it seemed
as if Hungary proposed to make emigration a state monopoly. This was
when the Government, in granting to the Cunard Steamship Company a
monopoly of the emigrant business at Fiume, made a contract to furnish
that line at least 30,000 emigrants a year. At that time there were
between one hundred and two hundred thousand emigrants leaving Hungary
every year, most of whom were making the journey to America by way of
the German lines at Hamburg and Bremen.
It is said that the Hungarian Government, in order to turn the tide
of emigration in the direction of Fiume and swell the traffic at that
port, directed that all steamship tickets should be sold by Government
agents, who refused permission to emigrants to leave the country by
other than the Fiume route.
Since then, however, Hungary has, I understand, modified its contract
with the Cunard Company in such a manner that it does not appear as if
the Government had actually gone into the business of exporting its own
citizens, and, instead of attempting to direct emigration through Fiume
by something amounting almost to force, it has rather sought to invite
traffic by creating at this post model accommodations for emigrants.
As a matter of fact the Government has, as a rule, attempted to
discourage emigration rather than increase it. Where that was not
possible it has still tried to maintain its hold upon its citizens in
America; to keep alive their interest in their native land and make the
emigration, as far as possible, a temporary absence, in order that the
state should not suffer a permanent loss of its labouring population,
and in order, apparently, that the stream of gold which had poured into
the country as a result of this emigration might not cease.
The actual amount of money which is brought back by returning
emigrants, or those living temporarily in America, cannot be definitely
determined. For example, not less than 47,000 emigrants returned to
Hungary in 1907. It is estimated, if I remember rightly, that each
returned emigrant brought home at least $200, while the average
immigrant, not permanently settled in America, sends back every year
about $120, which is probably more money than he could earn at home. In
the years 1900 to 1906, inclusive, there was sent to Hungary by money
orders alone, $22,917,566. In the year 1903 an official investigation
shows that, in addition to the money which went from America in other
ways, $17,000,000 was sent to Hungary through banks.
One result of this influx of money from America has been that the
peasant has been able to gratify his passion to obtain for himself
a little strip of land or increase the size of the farm he already
possesses. In fact, in certain places mentioned by Miss Balch in her
book, "Our Slavic Fellow Citizen," the demand for land has been so
great that it has increased in value between 500 and 600 per cent.[1]
In one year, 1903, according to Miss Balch, 4,317 emigrants from one
county in Croatia sent home $560,860, which is an average of not quite
$130 per immigrant. With this money 4,116 homes were bettered, by
paying debts, buying more land, or making improvements.
These facts give, however, but a small indication of the influence
which immigration has had, directly and indirectly, upon the conditions
of life among the masses of the people in Hungary and other portions of
southeastern Europe. For one thing, in arousing the hopes, ambitions,
and discontent of the so-called "inferior" peoples, it has added fuel
to the racial conflicts of the kingdom.
The Slovak or the Croatian who comes to America does not at once lose
his interest in the political and social struggles of his native
land. On the contrary, in America, where he has opportunity to read
newspapers printed in his own language, and to freely discuss racial
policies in the societies and clubs which have been formed by the
different nationalities in many parts of the United States, the average
Slovak or Croatian in America is likely to take a more intelligent
interest in the struggle for national existence of his own people than
he took at home.
In the case of members of some of the minor nationalities it has
happened that, owing to the persistence with which the Hungarian
Government had discouraged their efforts to teach their own languages,
it is not until they have reached America that they have had
opportunity to read their mother-tongue.
Some indication of the interest which the different immigrant peoples
take in the struggles of the members of their own race, in their native
land, is given by the work which several of these nationalist societies
are doing in America. The National Slavonic Society organizes political
meetings, raises funds for Slovak political prisoners in Hungary, and
scatters Slovak literature for the purpose of arousing sympathy and
interest in the Slovak cause.
In his book, "Racial Problems in Hungary," Seton-Watson, who has made a
special study of the condition of the Slovaks, says:
"The returned Slovak emigrants who have saved money in the
United States are steadily acquiring small holdings in Hungary,
and helping to propagate ideas of freedom and nationality among
their neighbours.... They speedily learn to profit by the free
institutions of their adopted country, and to-day the 400,000
Slovaks of America possess a national culture and organization
which present a striking contrast to the cramped development of
their kinsmen in Hungary. There are more Slovak newspapers in
America than in Hungary; but the Magyars seek to redress the
balance by refusing to deliver these American journals through the
Hungarian post-office. Everywhere among the emigrants, leagues,
societies, and clubs flourish undisturbed; ... these societies
do all in their power to awaken Slovak sentiment, and contribute
materially to the support of the Slovak press in Hungary."[2]
Seton-Watson adds that "the independence and confidence of the returned
emigrants are in striking contrast with the pessimism and passivity
of the elder generation." It is for this reason, perhaps, that the
Magyars, who represent the "superior race" in Hungary, say that
"America has spoiled the Slovak emigrant."
In travelling across Hungary from Fiume to Budapest, and thence to
Cracow, Poland, I passed successively through regions and districts
inhabited by many different racial types, but I think I gained a
more vivid notion of the strange mixture of races which make up the
population of the Dual Monarchy from what I saw in Fiume than in any
other part of the country. In Budapest, which is the great melting pot
of the races in Hungary, there is much the same uniformity in the dress
and manners of the different races that one meets in any other large
and cosmopolitan city. Fiume, on the contrary, has a much larger number
of people who seem to be still in touch with the customs and life of
their native villages, and have not yet learned to be ashamed to wear
the quaint and picturesque costumes of the regions to which they belong.
Among the most striking costumes which I remember to have seen were
those of the Montenegrin traders, with their red caps, embroidered
vests, and the red sashes around their waists, which made them look
like brigands. After these, perhaps the most picturesque costumes
which I saw were worn by a troop of Dalmatian girls, the most striking
feature of whose costume was the white woollen leggings, tied at the
knee with ribbons. One figure in particular that I recall was that of
a little woman striding through the streets of Fiume, driving a little
train of beautiful cream-coloured oxen.
All these distinctions of costume emphasized each other by contrast,
and as they each signified differences in traditions, prejudices, and
purposes of the people to whom they belonged, they gave one a sort of
picture of the clash of races in this strange and interesting country.
Even among those races which are no longer divided by costume and
habits, racial distinctions seem to be more clearly drawn than at
Budapest. For example, to a large extent the business of the city seems
to be monopolized by Germans and Jews. The Government officials are
Magyars, but the bulk of the population are Italians and Croatians.
As a matter of fact there are three distinct cities, which commonly
go under the name of Fiume. There is the modern city, with its opera
house, its handsome official buildings, which is Magyar; the elder
city, with its narrow, gossiping streets and Roman triumphal arch,
which is Italian, and, finally, just across the canal, or "fiume,"
which seems to have given the name to the city, is a handsome new
Croatian town which is officially distinct from the rest of the city,
having its own mayor and town officials.
Fiume itself has an exceptional position in the Kingdom of Hungary.
It is what was known in the Middle Ages as a "free city," with a
governor and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament. The mayor, I
understand, however, is an Italian, who has married a Croatian wife.
This alliance of two races in one family seems to have a certain
advantage in the rather tumultuous politics of the city, for I was told
that when the Croatians, as sometimes happens, go to the mayor's house
in procession, with their grievances, the mayor's wife has been able to
help her husband by addressing her own people in their native language.
The most interesting thing I saw in Fiume, however, was the immense
emigration building, which has accommodations, as I remember, for
something like 3,000 emigrants. Here are the offices of the Hungarian
emigration officials, and in this same building are received and cared
for, until the next succeeding sailing, the accumulations of the stream
of emigration which flows steadily out at this port from every part of
the kingdom.
Here the emigrants, after they have been medically examined, given a
bath and their clothes disinfected, are detained until the time of
embarkation. In company with United States Consul Slocum, from whom I
received much valuable information, I visited the emigration building
and spent a large part of one day looking into the arrangements and
talking, through an interpreter, with emigrants from different parts of
the country who were waiting there to embark.
Under his guidance I inspected the barracks, furnished with rows
upon rows of double-decked iron beds, observed the machinery for
disinfecting the clothing of emigrants, visited the kitchen, tasted the
soup, and finally saw all the different nationalities march in together
to dinner, the women in one row and the men in another. The majority of
them were of Magyar nationality; good, wholesome, sturdy, and thrifty
people they seemed. They were from the country districts. Some of them
were persons of property, who were going to America to earn enough
money to pay off mortgages with which their lands were burdened. Very
many of them had relatives, a brother, a sister, or a husband already
in America, and they seemed to be very well informed about conditions
in the new country where they were going.
The two most interesting figures that I noticed among the intended
emigrants were a tall, pallid, and barefooted girl, with rather
delicate and animated features, and a man in a linen blouse which hung
down to his knees, his feet and legs incased in a kind of moccason,
surmounted with leggings, bound with leather thongs. The girl was a
Ruthenian, who was going to meet relatives in America. The man, whom
I noticed looking, with what seemed to me rather envious interest and
curiosity, at a pair of American shoes on sale at one of the booths in
the big common hall, was a Roumanian.
Two of the emigrants with whom I talked had been in America before.
One of these, who understood a little English, seemed to be a leader
among the others. When I asked him the reason why he was going back to
America he spoke quite frankly and disparagingly about conditions in
the old country.
He said it was not so much the wages that led people to emigrate,
though they were small enough. But the worst of it was that there were
long intervals when it was not possible to get any work. Besides that,
the taxes were high.
"And then," he added, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his arm
with a gesture of impatience, "it is too tight here."
I suspect that this expresses the feeling of a good many emigrants who,
returning to their native country, have emigrated a second time. They
have found things in the old country "too tight" for comfort. There is
still room in America for people to spread out, and grow and find out
for themselves what they are capable of. As long as people find things
"too tight" they will move on. The plant stretches always toward the
light.
Among the emigrants with whom I had an opportunity to talk was a group
of Roumanians who had come up from Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen, as
they called it. They were a dark, silent sort of people, who hung very
closely together and looked at us out of the corners of their eyes.
When I sought to talk with them they seemed indisposed to answer my
questions, and finally one of them told the interpreter that they had
been instructed not to talk with any one until they reached America.
Considering the elaborate regulations which their Government has
imposed upon people seeking to leave Hungary, and the still more
elaborate regulations which our Government has imposed upon people
seeking to enter the United States, this did not particularly surprise
me.
Since these people were Roumanians, or Wallachs, from Siebenbürgen,
they may have had other reasons for not telling why they were leaving
the country. The Roumanians, although they proudly claim descent from
the Roman conquerors of this part of the world, are, nevertheless,
classed among the "inferior," as they are, in fact, among the most
ignorant, races in Hungary. As they have been particularly persistent
in advertising their wrongs to the rest of Europe, and have been
frequently punished for it, they may, perhaps, have learned that
silence is golden, particularly in the presence of Magyar officials.
When in Vienna I was seeking for information that would help me to
understand the racial situation in the Dual Monarchy, I found that
one of the most learned and brilliant writers on that subject was a
Roumanian who, while he was a student in a Roumanian academy in 1892,
had been arrested with other students and condemned to four years'
imprisonment for writing and circulating a pamphlet in which were
enumerated "acts of violence" committed against the other races of
Hungary by the "superior" Magyars.
The superiority of the dominant race seems, as a matter of fact, to be
the foundation stone of the political policy of the present government
in Hungary. In the last analysis it seems to be the major premise,
so to speak, of every argument which I happen to have heard or read
in justification of the policy which the Government has pursued in
reference to the other races of the monarchy. In fact, the "superiority
of the Magyar" race is responsible for most that is good and evil
in the history of Hungary for the past seventy years. It seems, for
example, to have been the chief source of inspiration for the heroic
struggle against Austria which began in 1848 and ended with the
independence of Hungary in 1867. It seems, also, to have been the goad
which has spurred on the impatient leaders of modern Hungary in their
hurry to overtake and surpass the progress of civilization in the rest
of Europe.
Unfortunately the ambition and success of the Magyars in their
effort to gain their political independence and preserve their
peculiar racial type from being lost and swallowed up by the other and
"inferior" peoples by whom it is surrounded have encouraged every other
nationality in a similar desire and determination.
"If it is good for the Magyars to preserve their language, customs, and
racial traditions," say the other races, in effect, "why is it not just
as important for us that we preserve ours?"
The reply of the Magyars is, in effect: "You have no language, no
history, no tradition worth keeping. In short, you are an inferior
race."
Naturally the argument does not end there. The other nationalities
reply by founding national schools and colleges to study and preserve
their peculiar language, traditions, and customs, while these
nationalities who have previously had no history proceed to make some.
Thus the doctrine of superiority of the Magyar race, which has been
so valuable in stimulating the Magyars to heroic efforts in behalf of
their own race, seems to have been just as valuable in stinging into
life the racial pride and loyalty of the other races. And thus, on
the whole, in spite of its incidental cruelties, the conflict of the
races in Hungary, like the struggle of the white and black races in the
South, seems to have done less harm than good. At least this is true
so far as it concerns the races which are down and are struggling up,
because oppression, which frequently stimulates the individual or the
race which suffers from it, invariably injures most the individual or
the race which inflicts it.
Most of the "acts of violence" of which the subordinate nations
complain are committed in the name of what is known as the "Magyar
State Idea," which seems to be little more, however, than the idea
that the Magyars must dominate, although they represent but 51 per
cent. of the population in Hungary proper and 45 per cent. of the total
population, including that of the annexed territory, Croatia-Slavonia.
So far is the Magyar race identified with the Government in Hungary
that it is punished as a kind of treason to say anything against the
Magyars. Most of the persons who are persecuted for political crimes
in Hungary seem to be charged either with panslavism, which is usually
little more than a desire of the Slavs to preserve their own national
existence, or with "incitement against the Magyar nationality."
On the part of the Magyars it does not seem to be any crime to speak
disrespectfully, or even contemptuously, of the other races. I have
observed that those writers who have sought to defend the "Magyar
State Idea" refer quite frankly to the Roumanians and the Slovaks as
"inferior races," who are not competent to govern themselves.
There is, likewise, a saying among the Magyars to the effect that "a
Slovak is not a human being," a notion that seems to spring up quite
naturally in the mind of any race which has accustomed itself to the
slavery and oppression of another race.
It is, however, all the more curious that such a saying should gain
currency in Hungary in view of the fact that Kossuth, the great
national hero of Hungary, was himself a Slovak.
One hears strange stories in Hungary of the methods which the dominant
race has employed to hold the other races in subjection. For example,
in the matter of elections, bribery, intimidation, and all the other
familiar methods for exploiting the vote of ignorant and simple-minded
people are carried on in a manner and to an extent which recalls the
days of Reconstruction in the Southern States.
In order to maintain the superior race in power, newspapers are
suppressed, schools are closed and the moneys for their support, which
have been collected for educational purposes, are confiscated by the
Government.
As an illustration of the lengths to which Hungary has gone in order
to maintain Magyar domination, it is said that when the Catholic
clergy, seeing the ravages which drink had made among Slovaks,
attempted to organize temperance societies among them, the Government
suppressed these organizations on the ground that they tended to foster
the sentiment of panslavism and so were in opposition to the "Magyar
State Idea." It is known, however, that the chief complaints against
these societies were from liquor dealers.
Apparently it is just as easy in Hungary as in America for selfish
persons to take advantage of racial prejudice and sentiment in order
to use it for their own ends. In fact, all that I saw and learned in
regard to the relation of the races in Hungary served to show me that
racial hatred works in much the same way, whether it exists among
people of the same colour but different speech, or among people of
different colour and the same speech.
If there are some points in which the relations of the races in
Hungary and the United States are similar, there are others in which
they differ. While Hungary is seeking to solve its racial problem
by holding down the weaker races and people, America is seeking to
accomplish the same result by lifting them up. In Hungary every effort
seems to be made to compel the so-called "inferior race" to give up
their separate language, to forget their national history, traditions,
and civilization--everything, in fact, which might inspire them, as
a people, with a desire or a proper ambition to win for themselves a
position of respect and consideration in the civilized world.
In America, on the contrary, each race and nationality is encouraged to
cultivate and take pride in everything that is distinctive or peculiar,
either in its traditions, racial traits, or disposition. I think I am
safe in saying that there is no country in the world where so many
different races of such different colours, habits, and traditions live
together in such peace and harmony as is true in the United States.
One reason for this is that there is no other country where "the man
farthest down" has more opportunity or greater freedom than in the
United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Charities Publication Committee, 1910.
[2] Quoted by Miss Balch in "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens," p. 116.
CHAPTER XIII
CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW
Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in
the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that
I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind
the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner
in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage,
through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that
story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a
plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many
times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week
goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same
Bible story.
The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses
should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient
Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of
the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader,
some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties
into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach.
As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that
of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom,
been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the
Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world
with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere.
I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York
City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I
had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish
and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge
in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or
Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the
Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until
then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of
persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews.
One of the first things I observed in regard to the Jews abroad was the
very different forms which racial prejudice takes in the different
countries that I visited. For example, in East London, which has long
been the refuge for the poor and oppressed of other countries, the Jew
is tolerated, although he is not liked. It is not clear just what is
the source of the English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes made that
the Jewish immigrant has driven out the native Briton from certain
parts of East London, but it is admitted at the same time that in such
cases it is because the Jew has proven a better tenant. He does not
drink, he is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. It seems to
be true in London, also, as it is in New York, that as soon as the
Jewish immigrant has made a little success he does not remain in the
same quarter of the city. He soon moves out and his place is taken by
some new and half-starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so that
there is a constant stream of "greeners," as they are called, coming
in, and another, perhaps somewhat smaller, stream of those who have
been successful moving out. In spite of this fact, it is generally
admitted that general conditions have improved under the influence
of the Jews. English prejudice where it exists seems to be due,
therefore, partly to economic causes and partly to the general distrust
of the alien that seems to be gaining in England with the influx of
immigration from southern Europe. In Denmark, on the contrary, where
the Jews seem to be very largely represented among the educated and
well-to-do classes, I discovered a great deal of prejudice against the
Germans but almost none against the Jews. In fact, one of the most
distinguished men in Denmark, outside of the King, a man who has been a
leader in the intellectual life of that country during the past thirty
years, Prof. Georg Brandes, is a Jew.
In Germany I learned that, while the Jews are prominent not only in
business but in the professions, it was still difficult for them to
rise in the army or to advance to the position of professor in the
universities, unless they have first been baptized.
In speaking about this matter to a German whom I met at one of the
hotels in Vienna, I called to mind the name of a distinguished
professor whose name I had heard as an instance of a Jew gaining a high
position in a German university.
"Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized."
That recalls to my mind a conundrum which an acquaintance proposed
while we were discussing some of the peculiarities of race prejudice in
Europe.
"When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The answer is of course, "When
he is a Christian." In other words, prejudice in Germany seems to be
directed only against the Jew who clings to his religion.
When I reached Prague in Bohemia I learned that among the masses of the
people there is little distinction made between Jews and Germans, since
both speak the same language, and the Czechs, confusing the one with
the other, hate both with a double hatred, first, for what they are,
and then for what they seem to be.
In Vienna and Budapest the Jews, through the newspapers which they
control, seem to exercise a powerful influence on politics. I remember
hearing repeated references while I was there to the "Jewish press."
In Prague it is said that every German paper but one is controlled
by Jews. Jews are represented, however, not only in the press in
Austria-Hungary, but in the army and in all the other professions.
They are not only financiers and business men, but doctors, lawyers,
artists, and actors, as elsewhere in Europe where they have gained
their freedom. Nevertheless it is still against the law for Jews and
Christians to intermarry in Austria-Hungary.
I have referred at some length to the condition of the Jews in other
parts of Europe where they have profited by the social and political
freedom which was granted them in the course of the nineteenth century,
because their progress there is in such striking contrast with their
condition as I saw it in and around Cracow, in Galicia; as it is,
also, just across the borders of Austria-Hungary, in Russian Poland
and Roumania, and as it seems to have been in other parts of Europe
seventy-five or a hundred years ago, before the gates of the Ghetto
were opened and the inhabitants emancipated.
Some notion of the conditions under which the Jews lived, in almost
every part of Europe, a hundred years ago, may be gathered from the
restrictions which are imposed upon them to-day in Russia and Roumania.
In Roumania a Jew can neither vote nor hold office in the civil
service. He is excluded from the professions; he is not permitted,
for example, to become a physician or even open a pharmacy; he is not
permitted to live in the rural districts; he may neither own land
outside of the town nor work as an agricultural labourer. In the mills
and factories not more than 25 per cent. of the employees may be Jews.
Although they are practically restricted to business enterprises, Jews
may not become members of chambers of commerce. Jews are bound to
serve in the army, they pay heavier taxes, proportionately, than other
portions of the community, but they are classed under the laws as
"aliens not subject to alien protection."
In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live outside of what is called the
"Pale of Settlement," which includes twelve provinces on the western
and southwestern borders which Russia has annexed during the past
two hundred years. Only merchants who pay a special license of 1,000
rubles, or about $500, university graduates, and a few others may live
outside the pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in Siberia unless
he has been sent there in punishment for crime.
Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live outside the cities and
incorporated towns. Although Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and
send representatives to the Duma, they are not permitted to hold office
or to be employed in the public service. They are compelled to pay in
addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy enough, taxes on the
rents they receive from property owned by them, or inheritances, on
the meat killed according to the Jewish law, on candles used in some
of their religious observances, and on the skull caps they wear during
religious services. In spite of this they are excluded from hospitals,
schools, and public functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid for
out of the extra taxes imposed upon them.
The most singular thing about it all is that the disabilities under
which the Russian Jew now labours are at once removed by baptism. Not
only that, but every Jew who allows himself to be sprinkled with holy
water, in sign of the renunciation of his religion and his people,
receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," as a reward.
The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not subject to any of the medieval
restrictions which are imposed upon members of their race in Russia and
Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, all the political rights of other races.
Nevertheless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than they are in
some parts of Russian Poland, although very much better off than in
some parts of southern Russia.
Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had their freedom, Jews are as a
rule more prosperous than the people by whom they are surrounded. In
Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews represent 4.88 per cent. of
the total population, 15 per cent. of those who had an income of 1,500
marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics show that similar conditions
exist in other parts of Europe.[3]
When I asked an acquaintance, who had lived a number of years in
Austria, why this was so, he replied that there were so many Jews in
Galicia that there were not enough other people to support them. He
then went on to explain that between the two classes, the nobility who
owned the land and the peasant who cultivated it, the Jew represented
the trader, or middleman. It was, therefore, literally true that there
were not enough other people in the country to support the Jew, who
represents, however, not more than 11 per cent. of the total population.
One of the first persons I met in Galicia was a representative of this
poorer class of Jews. I reached Cracow late one afternoon in the latter
part of September. There was a cold wind blowing and, for the first
time since I had left Scotland, I noticed an uncomfortable keenness in
the evening air, which was an indication, I suppose, that I was on the
northern and eastern or the Russian side of the Carpathian Mountains.
One of the first persons I encountered as I was standing shivering at
the entrance of the hotel was a pale-faced, brown-eyed little boy, who
spoke to me in English and seemed to want to establish some sort of
friendship with me on the basis of our common acquaintance with the
English language. He was unmistakably a Jew and, as we walked down
the street together, he told me something of his life in London and
then in Cracow. I gathered from what he was able to tell me that his
father, who was a cabinetmaker and, as he said, "very poor," had found
it harder to live in the fierce competition of the London sweatshops,
where he had been employed, than in the Ghetto at Cracow, and so had
grown discouraged and returned.
I learned from him, as I did later from others of his race, that not
all the Jews who came to England and America succeed and get rich in
a few years, as seems to be commonly supposed. Some of them fail,
and some get into unexpected troubles, and frequently families who
immigrate are broken up and some of them sent back as a consequence of
the enforcement of the immigration regulations, so that there is not so
much eagerness to go to America as there was a few years ago.
In spite of this fact the Jews of Galicia, nearly every one of whom
probably has friends or relatives either in England or America, seem
to look with peculiar interest upon every one who speaks the English
language, because they regard them as representatives of a people who,
more than any other in the world, have tried to be just to the Jews.
A few days later I met in a little village a few miles from Cracow a
Jewish trader who, like most of the Jews in this part of the country,
spoke German as well as Polish, so that with the assistance of Doctor
Park I was able to speak with him. He said that his business was to
buy grain and fodder from the large landowners in different parts of
Galicia and sell it again to the peasants, who used it to feed their
stock. When he learned that I was from America and that I wanted to
see something of the life of the peasant people he volunteered to be
my guide. It was a very fortunate meeting for me, for I found that
this man not only knew about the condition of nearly every family in
the village, but he understood, also, exactly how to deal with them so
that, at his touch, every door flew open, as if by magic, and I was
able to see and learn all that I wanted to know.
In the meantime I noticed that our guide and interpreter seemed to be
quite as interested in learning about America as I was interested in
getting acquainted with Galicia. He interlarded all his information
about the condition of the peasants in different parts of the country
with questions about conditions in America. As it turned out, he not
only had relatives in America, but he had a cousin in New York who had
got into trouble and been sent to prison for three years on account
of some business irregularity. It was a small matter, according to
my Jewish friend, that would not have cost more than eight days'
imprisonment in Galicia. He could not understand, therefore, how a poor
man should be treated more harshly in a free country like America,
where all are equal, than he was at home, where he was the underdog and
did not expect consideration. What seemed to trouble him most, however,
was the fact that he had not heard from his cousin for a year and no
one knew what had become of him.
When the matter was explained to me, I told the man that if he would
give me the name and last address of his cousin, when I returned to New
York I would look the matter up and, if possible, learn what had become
of the missing cousin.
This seemed to me a very natural proposal, under the circumstances,
but it evidently took the poor man by surprise, for he stopped, stared
at me an instant, and then in the most humble manner knelt down and
kissed my hand. I confess that at first I was a little shocked and
rather disgusted. Afterward I learned that it is a common habit, more
especially in Russia, for peasants to kiss the hands and even the feet
of their superiors. The thought that occurred to me, however, was that
it must have taken many centuries of subjection and oppression to make
this attitude of humility a familiar and natural way, as it seemed to
be in this case, of expressing gratitude.
The singular thing about it all was that this Jew who had shown himself
so humble toward me looked down upon and despised the Polish peasants
among whom he trades. He referred to them as "ignorant and dirty
creatures." For all that, he seemed to have learned their ways of
expressing himself to those to whose power or influence he looked for
help or protection.
Under these circumstances, with these ingrained habits in the masses of
the people, I found it hard to imagine just what the right of manhood
suffrage, which has recently been conferred upon the people in all the
provinces of Austria, was likely to mean in actual practice.
Nothing was impressed more forcibly upon me during my study of
conditions in Europe than this--namely, that we can tell very little
from the mere fact that this or that political institution exists in a
country just what privileges or disadvantages these institutions bring
to the masses of the people. In fact, it seems to be just as true in
Europe as it is in America, that mere legislative enactments can of
themselves no more produce justice and freedom than they can produce
industry and thrift. After the physical bondage has been destroyed
there still remains the bondage of superstition, of ignorance, and of
religious, class, and racial prejudice. The act of this Jew in kissing
my hand was a revelation to me, not only of his own state of mind, but
of the conditions by which he was surrounded.
I think this one incident, more than anything else I saw or heard while
I was in Galicia, gave me an insight into the life of the people. It
seemed to me I could understand, for example, from this alone, why the
Jews have made little more progress in Galicia than they have in the
neighbouring provinces of Roumania and Russia.
As for my guide, I might add that I never heard from him afterward.
If he wrote to me the letter never reached me, and I do not know what
finally became of the cousin whom he had lost.
Perhaps I ought, before I attempt to describe the condition of the
poorer class of Jews in Cracow, to say something of another Ghetto
which I saw while in Europe.
During my stay in Prague I took a walk one day through an ancient
quarter of the city which had been formerly inhabited by Jews. The
Ghetto of Prague is said to have been the largest and most famous in
Europe. It was, in fact, a city in itself, for it contained not merely
the oldest synagogue in Europe, with a famous old Jewish burial ground
attached to it, but also a Rathhaus, or city hall, and a market
in which, according to tradition, Jewish traders at one time sold
Christian slaves. So thoroughly were the Jews at one time established
in this quarter of the city that it went under the name of Judenstadt,
or Jewtown. There they maintained, in a small way, a separate civil
government of their own, just as they do, to a lesser extent, in Russia
to-day. In his book on the Jews, already referred to, Mr. M. Fishberg,
to whom I am indebted for many facts and statistics concerning the
condition of the Jew, says of the Jews in Russia to-day:
They speak their own language, Yiddish, and many conduct their
affairs, keep their ledgers, write contracts, wills, and many
other documents in this dialect; the registration of births,
marriages, and deaths is done by their rabbis, and the divorces
granted by them are recognized by the state as valid; in the
smaller towns they prefer to settle their differences before
their own judiciary (Beth din), and not in the state courts; they
collect the greater part of their own taxes for the Government in
the name of the Jewish community; not only is each individual Jew
required to do military duty, but the Jewish community as a whole
is held responsible for delivering annually a certain number of
recruits. This separateness goes as far as the calendar with many
Jews, who date their letters and documents according to the Hebrew
and not the Russian calendar. Up to about fifty years ago it was a
disgrace for a Jew to be able to read Russian or German, or even
to have in his possession a book in one of these vulgar languages;
it was a sin next to apostasy. But during the last two generations
a profound change has taken place.
At the time I was in Prague the ancient Ghetto was in process of
demolition, and it illustrates the change which has come in recent
years that most of the people living in the narrow streets and battered
ancient buildings of the former Ghetto were not Jews but Christians.
After Prague, the city which has the oldest and most interesting Ghetto
in Europe is Cracow, and the most interesting thing about it is the
fact that it is still inhabited by Jews. They live there to-day very
much, I suppose, as they did a hundred years ago, a race separate
and apart, more removed, apparently, from the manners, customs, and
comprehension of the rest of the world than any people this side of
China.
I have known Jews nearly all my life. I have done business with them
and have more than once talked to them in their synagogues, and have
always found sympathy and support among them for the work I have had
to do for my own people. I have frequently visited and studied, to
some extent, the poorer classes in the Jewish quarter on the East Side
in New York. In spite of this, however, when certain strange figures
in long black coats, soft felt hats, with pale faces, lighted by dark
glittering eyes and framed by glossy curls which hung down on either
side in front of their ears, were pointed out to me in Vienna, I had
not the slightest notion to what race or nationality of people they
belonged. Later on, when I reached Cracow, these same slender figures
and pale, delicate faces became very familiar to me, and I learned to
recognize in them the higher type of Polish Jew.
The great majority of the Jews in Cracow still make their homes in a
quarter of the city called the "Kazimierz," which gets its name from
that of a Polish king who fell in love with a beautiful Jewess some
four hundred years ago and, for her sake, made Poland a refuge for the
members of her race, who, at that time, were hunted almost like wild
beasts in other parts of Europe.
I visited the Kazimierz late one afternoon, when the narrow, dirty,
and ill-smelling streets were swarming with their strange brood of
slatternly, poverty-stricken, and unhealthy looking inhabitants.
I have been through the Jewish quarter in New York, with its confusion
of pushcarts, its swarms of black-eyed children, and its strange old
men with gray-brown beards wandering careworn and absorbed through the
crowded streets, each anxiously intent on some thought or purpose of
his own. The Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York is, however, a
pale reflection of the Ghetto in Cracow. For one thing, the Jew in New
York, though he retains many of the habits and customs of the country
from which he came, seems, in most cases, to be making an earnest
effort to make an American of himself; to learn the language, adopt the
dress and, as far as possible, the manners of the new country of which
he is soon to become, if he is not already, a citizen.
The masses of the Polish Jews, however, still cling tenaciously to the
customs of their religion and of the Ghetto in which, for a thousand
years or more, they have lived as exiles and, more or less, like
prisoners. Instead of seeking to make themselves look like the rest of
the people among whom they live, they seem to be making every effort to
preserve and emphasize the characters in which they are different from
the people about them.
Although I met in Cracow Jews in all the various stages of
transition--as far as their dress is concerned--from the traditional
Ghetto Jew to the modern literary, professional or business man,
nevertheless the majority of the Jews still cling to the long black
coat which they were compelled to wear in the Middle Ages. Certain ones
have discarded this symbol of exclusiveness, but still wear the long
beard, and the side curls in front of their ears, which seem to be
especially dear to them, perhaps, because, for some reason I could not
understand, they are forbidden to wear them in Russia.
Perhaps it was the effect of the costume, which gave them a strange
and alien appearance, but it seemed to me, at first, as if every Jew
in Cracow had exactly the same features, the same manner of walking,
and the same expression of countenance. As I watched the different
figures in the crowded streets more closely, however, I discovered that
beneath the peculiar dress and manner many different types of human
beings were concealed. There were the pale-browed students, who moved
through the crowd with a hurried and abstracted air; there were slender
and elegant aristocrats, who, while still wearing the uniform of their
race, dressed with a scrupulous correctness and looked at you with an
expression which seemed a curious mingling of the humility of the Jew
and the scorn of the Pharisee.
There was the commonplace plodding Jew, following humbly in the common
ruts of barter and trade and the daily and weekly routine which his
religion prescribed. There was the outcast beggar, dirty and wretched,
doddering aimlessly along the dirty street or sitting in some doorway,
staring disconsolately into the street. There was, also, the dirty,
gluttonous, ignorant, and brutal type, on whom neither suffering nor
fanaticism seemed to have made any impression, and who, in his Jewish
dress and manners, looked like a caricature of his more high-bred
neighbour.
I visited the ancient synagogue while I was in Cracow, which they say
was built for the Jews by that same Polish king, Kazimierz, who first
invited them to take refuge in his country. I saw there the ancient
Roll of the Laws and ancient Prayer Book which were brought from Spain
when the Jews were expelled from that country.
Nearby the synagogue is the ancient Jewish market. A narrow street
leads into an open square in the centre of which is a circular
building. Before one of the entrances of this building a man, with the
pale brow and delicate features which seem to be a mark of superiority
among the people of the Ghetto, was publicly slaughtering geese. The
square in which this building stood was surrounded on all sides by rows
of little market booths, in front of which groups of men and women
were dickering and trading for various small wares. A crowd of women
stood about the building in the centre of the square and watched the
pale-browed man, who did not seem to relish the job, as he rapidly and
dexterously performed the ceremony of cutting the throats of the geese.
These were handed to him by a good-natured looking woman, wearing an
apron and high boots, red with blood. After the geese were killed they
were hung over a pit to drain, while fresh victims were brought from
the baskets and crates standing about in the open square. A foul smell
from the open pit in which the geese were allowed to bleed filled the
square. This did not add to the dignity of the proceedings, but it
served to impress them upon my memory.
In one corner of the square I noticed a dull gray-coloured building
from which troops of little Jewish children were issuing. It was one
of those schools by means of which Jewish teachers, through all the
persecutions and dispersions of nineteen centuries, have kept alive the
memory of the Jewish history and the Jewish law and so kept the race
together. I do not think I know of anything which so illustrates and
emphasizes the power of education as the influences which these schools
have had upon the Jewish people.
I was interested in all that I saw of the life of the Jew in Cracow,
because it gave me some idea of the poverty, degradation, and squalor
in which more than half of the Jewish race is living to-day in
different parts of Europe. Of the twelve million Jews in the world,
about nine millions live in Europe. Of this number more than six
million live in Russia and nearly two million and a half in Austria,
Roumania, and the other parts of southeastern Europe. I have given some
idea of the poverty of the Jews in Galicia, where they are politically
free. From all that I can learn the Jews in Russia and Roumania are
very much worse off than they are in the Austrian province of Galicia.
Most of us, who are acquainted with Jews only in America or in western
Europe, have been led to believe, in spite of the evident poverty of
many of the Jews who live on the East Side in New York and in the
Whitechapel district of London, that, as a race, the Jews are extremely
wealthy. I was surprised, therefore, to read recently the statement,
made by Jews who have investigated the condition of their own people,
to the effect that, while they are undeniably wealthier than their
Christian neighbours in the countries in which, during the past hundred
years, they have been granted their freedom, taking the Jews as a
whole they are poorer than any other civilized nation in the world. In
short, one writer has said: "If we were to capitalize their wealth and
distribute it among the twelve millions of Jews they would dispute with
any poor nation for the lowest place in the scale of wealth."[4]
The direction in which the Jews seem to be superior to all of the rest
of the world is apparently not in wealth but in education. Even in
Russia, where they do not have the same educational advantages that
are given to the rest of the population, it is found that, while 79
per cent. of the total population can neither read nor write, the
percentage of illiteracy among the Jews is 61 per cent. which is 18 per
cent. less than that of the rest of the population.
In western Europe, where Jews have equal opportunities with their
Gentile neighbours in the matter of education, they are far in advance
of them in education. Statistics for Cracow show, for example, that
while only a little more than 2 per cent. of the Jews who applied for
marriage licenses were unable to read and write, between 15 and 20 per
cent. of the Christians in the same category were illiterate. In Italy,
where 42.6 per cent. of the men and 57 per cent. of the women of the
Christian population over fifteen years of age are unable to read and
write, only 3 per cent. of the men and 7.5 per cent. of the women among
the Jews are illiterate.
In Austria over 25 per cent. of the students of the universities are
Jews, although they represent only 5 per cent. of the population.
In Hungary, where Jews represent 4.9 per cent. of the population,
they furnish 30.27 per cent. of the students in the universities
and other schools of higher education. In Baden, Germany, Jews have
proportionately three and a half times as many students as the
Christians. Since 1851 the number of Jewish students in Austrian
universities has increased more than sevenfold, while the number of
Christian students has scarcely more than trebled in that time.
One reason for this is that the Jews have almost invariably made their
homes in the cities, where the opportunities for education existed.
They have, at the same time, been almost wholly engaged in business,
which not only requires a certain amount of education, but is in
itself, more than other occupations, a source of education.
The name rabbi, or teacher, has always been a title of respect and
honour among the Jews from the earliest time. It was the name that his
disciples bestowed upon Jesus.
If there were no other reasons why the story of the Jew should be
studied, it would be interesting and inspiring as showing what
education can do and has done for a people who, in the face of
prejudice and persecution, have patiently struggled up to a position of
power and preëminence in the life and civilization in which all races
are now beginning to share.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] M. Fishberg, "The Jews," p. 366.
[4] M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361.
CHAPTER XIV
A POLISH VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS
It was a Jewish trader who advised me to visit Jedlovka. He said that I
would see the peasants living there now as they had lived for hundreds
of years--in the simplest and most primitive fashion.
Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling village in the foothills of
the Carpathians--the mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. In
order to reach the village it was necessary to take the train at Cracow
and ride for an hour or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is the
Ruthenian, just as Cracow is the Polish, metropolis of Galicia.
At a place called Turnow we changed cars and continued our journey in
a direction at right angles to that in which we previously travelled.
It was another hour's ride by train to the foothills of the mountain.
At Tuchow, at the point where the railway, running southward, plunges
into the mountain, we disembarked again and continued our journey by
wagon. The road led up out of the broad plain through which we had
been travelling, into a narrow and sombre little valley. At the end of
this valley there is a little wayside inn. Higher up, where the road,
winding up out of the valley, leads out into a high, clear space at
what seemed to be the top of the mountain, there is a church, and this
tavern and the church, together with a few scattering log huts, were
the village of Jedlovka and the end of our journey.
I had had a vague sort of notion that somewhere in this remote region I
should meet peasants wearing sheepskin jackets, sandals, and leggings
bound with thongs, driving their herds to pasture. I even had a wild
hope that I should come upon some rustic festival, such as I had read
about, where the young men and women would dance upon the greensward,
to the music of shepherds' pipes. As a matter of fact, it chanced that
our visit did fall upon a feast day, but there were no shepherds and
no dances. What I saw was a crowd of women pouring out of the little
church, high upon the hill, and crowds of drunken men carousing at the
tavern below.
Before I proceed to tell what I learned of the peasant life in this
mountain country, however, I want to refer to one feature of Polish
life which was impressed upon me by what I saw on the way.
I have referred in the preceding chapter to the position which the
Jew occupies in the economic organization of Polish life. He is the
middleman and has the trade of the country very largely in his hands. I
was particularly impressed with this fact by what I saw in the course
of this journey. Although the Jews represent only about 13 per cent.
of the population of Galicia, I am certain that more than half of the
people on the train on which we travelled were people of that race.
There were Jews of all descriptions and in all stages of evolution,
from the poor, patient pedler, wearing the garb of the Ghetto, to the
wealthy banker or merchant fastidiously dressed in the latest European
fashion. When we left the train at Tuchow it was a Jewish horse trader
who drove us in his improvised coach the remainder of our journey into
the mountains. A restaurant at which we stopped to get something to eat
on our return was conducted by a Jew. Halfway to our destination we
passed a tumbledown cottage, close to the roadside, with a few trinkets
in the window and some skins hanging from the beam which ran along the
front of the building. We stopped and spoke to an ancient man with a
long white beard, who lives there. He, also, was a Jewish trader. As I
recall, he was engaged in buying skins from the peasants, paying them
in the junk which I noticed displayed in the window. When we reached
the tavern at the end of our journey it turned out that the man who ran
the tavern was a Jew. Apparently wherever in Poland money changes hands
a Jew is always there to take charge of it. In fact, it seemed to me
that the Jew in Poland was almost like the money he handled, a sort of
medium of exchange.
It was a very curious conveyance in which we made the last stage of our
journey into the mountains. Instead of the droske we had expected to
meet at the station we found what, under ordinary circumstances, would
have been a farmer's wagon, I suppose, although it was an altogether
different sort of farmer's wagon from any I had ever seen in America.
The frame of this vehicle was something like a great long basket,
narrow at the bottom, where it sat upon the axles, and wider at the
top. The rim of this basket was made of poles, about the size of a
fence rail, and this rim was supported upon the frame, which rested
on the wagon, by little poles or pickets fastened in the frame below
and the rim above, like a fence paling. The frame was so formed that
it might have served the purpose either of a hayrick or a carryall.
In this case it had been converted into a sort of coach or omnibus,
with hanging seats, supported with leather straps from the rim.
Arranged in this way this farmer's wagon was a not inconvenient mode
of travel, and, driving through the fresh green country, dotted with
quaint, little moss-covered cottages which seemed as much a part of
the landscape as if they had grown there, the journey was made very
pleasantly.
The houses in this part of the country were, for the most part,
smaller, more weather-worn and decrepit, than those I had seen in other
parts of Galicia. In fact, in some cases the green-thatched roofs
were so old, so overgrown with vegetation, and the little whitewashed
frames of the buildings that supported them had so sunken into the
soil, that some of them looked like gigantic toadstools. As the day we
visited this part of the country was a holiday, we met along the way
many of the peasants, dressed in the quaint and picturesque garb of the
country, passing in groups of two or three along the road.
I had before this visited a number of the peasant houses and was
familiar with the plan and arrangement of them. The interior of these
houses is usually divided into two rooms, separated in most cases by an
entrance or hallway. In one of these rooms the whole family, consisting
of the parents and perhaps five or six children, live, eat, and sleep.
In this room there is usually a very large brick or stone oven which,
on the cold winter nights, I learned, frequently serves the purpose of
a bed. In the other room are the cows, pigs, geese, chickens. If the
farmer is well-to-do he will have a number of buildings arranged in
a hollow square having a goose pond in the centre and, in that case,
the servants will very likely sleep in the straw in the barns with
the cattle. I can give a more vivid notion of some of these houses by
quoting a few lines from the notes jotted down by Doctor Park at the
time of our visit:
To-day, for the first time, we visited some of the peasant houses
in a little village about three or four miles from Cracow. It
was difficult at first to make friends with the people. After a
time it transpired that they were afraid that, although we were
evidently foreigners, we might be Government officials of some
sort. This is, perhaps, not strange, since there are many races
in this country and most of them are "foreigners" to each other.
Our guide says the people fear the country will be some day handed
over to Russia. We got on better when the people learned we were
Americans.
Every window of the little cottages we passed was crowded with
laughing, curious children, with pink faces and white teeth. We
visited the home of a widow with ten "yokes" of land and two cows.
The cows give fifteen litres of milk a day, which is about ten
quarts. The woman carries this to the market in Cracow every day.
In the narrow little kitchen the children were all lined up in a
row against the wall as we entered. One of them darted forward
suddenly to kiss my hand. Mother and children were barefoot.
The cow is across the hall from the kitchen. These two rooms,
the kitchen and the cow-stall, are all there is to the house. I
discovered what the duck pond in front of the house is for. The
woman was filling it with straw to make manure.
One of the leading men in the village has a brand-new house made
of logs. The logs were neatly squared and the chinks between
them carefully plastered and painted. The house had three rooms,
besides a storeroom and cow-stall. I counted three barns in the
court, besides three outdoor cellars, one for the milk and the
others for the storing of vegetables. To my question as to what
the farmer did in the winter our guide replied, "Nothing. When
they want money they go to the hole where the potatoes and turnips
are buried and carry a load to the town." The owner of this house
was very proud of his new place and showed one room in which were
several huge chests, decorated and stained in bright vermilion
in the peculiar style of peasant art. These chests were filled
with clothes--peasant costumes of very handsome material, very
beautifully embroidered and decorated. The principal ornament of
the costume shown us was a belt studded with brass nails with
broad leather clasps, as large as a small platter, behind and
in front. It must have occupied the hours of a good many long
winter evenings to make the garments this man had stowed away in
these chests. Although there was plenty of room in this house, it
is evident that the family lives almost wholly in the one large
living-room.
The houses I visited in the mountain were constructed on the same plan
as those described, except sometimes there was only one room for the
whole family, including the cow, the chickens, and the rest of the
animals. It is very cold on the north side of the mountains in winter,
and the peasants and cattle frequently live in the same room to keep
warm.
In one of the little huts which I ventured to enter I found two old
women lying down, apparently asleep, on a heap of straw, while a cow
standing nearby them was peacefully chewing her cud, and several
chickens were busily scratching among the straw on the earth floor. As
there was almost no ventilation the air in some of these houses was
almost indescribable.
It was in this part of the country, in the vicinity of the village
tavern, that I found people who were poor, even by the very moderate
standard of comfort that prevails in rural Poland. We passed on the
drive up the valley a number of little huddling straw-thatched huts.
One of these, which did not seem to be inhabited, I determined to
explore. The building was of the prevailing type, with the cowshed in
one end and the living-room in the other, but the thatch was no longer
green, and age had imparted to the whole of the outside of the building
a very dismal, weather-worn appearance. The windows were evidently of
skins, of the same brown colour as the building itself. The entrance
was through what would evidently have been the cowshed, but this was
empty. The door into the living-room was open, and, as I entered, I
saw at first only a cow tied to a manger. At the other end of the
room, hovering about a little stone hearth, on which a little fire of
twigs burned, were an old man and woman. As is frequently the case
in many parts of Poland, there was no chimney, and the rafters of the
house were deeply incrusted with the smoke which had accumulated in
the peak of the roof and filtered out through the thatch or through an
opening at the end of the building. The old people seemed very poor and
helpless and, as I was about to leave the room, they held out their
hands and begged for alms. I should like to have stayed and talked with
them, but unfortunately I had no one with me at the time who was able
to speak the Polish language.
As I learned that a number of people had gone to America from this
valley I suspected that these old people were some of those who had
been left behind and perhaps forgotten by the younger generation who
had gone across the seas. I made some attempt later to learn if my
suspicions were well founded, but no one whom I afterward met seemed to
know anything about the history of the old people.
The wealthiest landlord in the vicinity was, as I learned, a Polish
priest, who owned four different farms, and most of the people in
the neighbourhood seemed to be his tenants. He lived in a big, bare,
rambling house, surrounded by great barns filled with cattle and
produce of various kinds. I stopped to call at this house, thinking
that I might learn something from him about the poor people I have
referred to, but the good priest was not at home and the people whom I
found at this house did not seem to be able to tell me anything.
The tavern, which was a long, low log structure, built on the same
general plan as the houses in the village, was crowded with revellers
and steaming with the fumes of beer. Men were standing about, swinging
their arms and shouting at each other at the top of their lungs,
and almost every one of them was drunk. Several of the men present,
including the proprietor, had been, as I learned, in America. One of
them, who could speak a few words of English, gave us an especially
hearty welcome. Some of the money which pours into Poland from America
had reached even this remote corner of the country, it seemed.
I asked the proprietor, who had lived in Newark, N.J., for a time and
spoke a little English, whether he liked this part of the world better
than America.
"It is easier to live here," he said. Then added, "when you have a
little money."
"But when you haven't any money?" I suggested. He shrugged his
shoulders. "Then go to America," he said.
He told me a good deal of land had been purchased in this part of the
country with money earned in America. Land was worth from 500 to 1,000
guilder per "yoke," which is about $100 to $200 per acre, a very large
sum in a country where wages are, perhaps, not more than 25 or 50 cents
a day.
At nightfall we returned to Tuchow, which appeared to be a typical
market town. The town is arranged, like many of our country villages in
the South, around a large open square. In the centre of this square is
a great covered well, from which the town draws its water. Four pumps,
with long twisted iron handles, arranged in a circle about the well,
serve to draw the water to the surface. Around the four corners of this
square are the tradesmen's shops, most of them with low, thatched roofs
projecting over the sidewalk to form a cover for the walk in front of
the shops, and frequently supported, on the side toward the street, by
curiously carved wooden posts. The little shops were not more than six
or eight feet wide. There was usually one little room in front which
was for the store, and another little room back in which the shopkeeper
lived. As the ceilings were usually very low and the windows under the
wide projecting roofs were very small, it made everything appear very
snug and tight, somewhat as if every building were holding on to all
that it contained with both arms.
It all looked very interesting but very quaint and old-fashioned. I
noticed, however, that there were one or two new brick buildings in the
town, and the evening we arrived every one was in great excitement over
the installation in the public square of two new electric lights, the
first, I suspect, that had been seen in that part of the country. It
was evident that in spite of the apparent solidity and antiquity that
things were changing here as elsewhere.
CHAPTER XV
A RUSSIAN BORDER VILLAGE
Of the three former capitals of Poland the city of Cracow, the last of
Polish territory to lose its independence, is now an Austrian fortress.
One day, shortly after my arrival, I was driving in the suburbs of the
city when my attention was directed to a number of low, grass-covered
mounds scattered about at regular intervals in the level plain outside
the city. To all appearances these mounds were nothing more than slight
elevations of land sinking, in a direction away from the city, almost
imperceptibly into the surrounding landscape. In all probability,
if it had not been for a certain regularity in the positions which
they occupied, I should not have noticed them. I had never seen a
modern fortified city and I was therefore considerably surprised when
I learned that these gentle elevations were fortifications and that
beneath these grass-grown mounds enormous guns were concealed, powerful
enough to keep a vast army at bay. These facts served to remind me
that Cracow was a border city, guarding a frontier which divides, not
merely two European countries, but two civilizations--I might almost
say, two worlds. Cracow is, as a matter of fact, ten miles from the
Russian frontier, and, although the people in Russian Poland are of the
same race or nationality as those who live in the Austrian province of
Galicia, speaking the same language and sharing the same traditions,
the line which divides them marks the limits of free government in
Europe.
Now, there were several things that made this frontier, where eastern
and western Europe meet, peculiarly interesting to me. In the first
place, I knew that thousands of people, most of them Poles and Jews,
who were unwilling or unable to pay the high tax which Russia imposes
upon its emigrants, were every year smuggled across that border in
order to embark at some German or Austrian port for America. I knew
at the same time that Jews and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, Poles,
outside of Russia were making use of this same underground railway
to send back, in return for the emigrants who came out, another kind
of contraband--namely, books and bombs. In fact, I had heard that a
few years ago, when Russian Poland was all aflame with civil war, it
was from Cracow that the Jews, who were the leading spirits in that
movement, directed the revolution.
Naturally all this served to increase my natural curiosity in this
border country. So it was that one cool, clear day in September I
rented a little droske for the day and started, in company with my
companion, Doctor Park, for the Russian border.
We drove leisurely along a splendid military road, between broad
fields, in which peasants were gathering, in the cool autumn sunlight,
the last fruits of the summer's harvest. A country road in Galicia, as
is true in almost any part of Europe, is a good deal more of a highway
than a country road in most parts of America. One meets all sorts of
travellers. We passed, for example, just beyond the limits of the city,
a troop of soldiers, with the raw look of recruits--red-faced country
boys they seemed, for the most, bulging out of their military suits and
trudging along the dusty road with an awkward effort at the military
precision and order of veterans. Now and then we passed a barefoot
peasant woman, tramping briskly to or from the city, with a basket on
her head or a milk can thrown over her shoulder.
Once we stopped to watch a group of women and girls threshing. One
woman was pitching down sheaves of rye from the barn loft, another was
feeding them to the machine, and all were in high glee at the wonderful
way, as it seemed to them, in which this new invention separated the
grain from the chaff. They were so proud of this little machine that,
when we stopped and showed our interest in what they were doing, they
insisted on showing us how it worked, and took pains to explain the
advantages over the old-fashioned flail. There was a man sitting on a
beam outside the barn smoking a pipe, but the women were doing the work.
On this same journey we stopped at a little straggling village and
spent an hour or two visiting the homes of the people. We saw the house
of the richest peasant in the village, who owned and farmed something
like a hundred acres of land, as I remember; and then we visited
the home of the poorest man in the community, who lived in a little
thatch-roofed cottage of two rooms; one of these was just large enough
to hold a cow, but there was no cow there. The other room, although it
was neat and clean, was not much larger than the cow-stall, and in this
room this poor old man and his daughter lived. Incidentally, in the
course of our tramp about the village, Doctor Park managed to pick up
something of the family histories of the people and not a little of the
current gossip in the community, and all this aided me in getting an
insight, such as I had not been able to get elsewhere, into the daily
life and human interests of this little rural community.
At one point along the road we stopped for a few minutes at a wayside
tavern. It was a log structure, with one great, long, low, desolate
room, in one corner of which was a bar at which a sour-faced woman
presided. Two or three men were lounging about on the benches in
different parts of the room, but here again the woman was doing the
work.
Every mile or two it seemed to me we met a wagon piled high with great
bulging bags as large as bed ticks. In each case these wagons were
driven by a little shrewd-faced Jew. These wagons, as I learned, had
come that morning from Russia and the loads they carried were goose
feathers.
A little farther on we came up with a foot passenger who was making
toward the border with great strides. He turned out to be a Jew, a
tall, erect figure, with the customary round, flat hat and the long
black coat which distinguish the Polish Jew. Our driver informed us,
however, that he was a Russian Jew, and pointed out the absence of the
side curls as indicating that fact. Although this man had the outward
appearance, the manner, and the dress of the Jews whom I had seen in
Cracow, there was something in the vigorous and erect carriage that
impressed me to such an extent that I suggested that we stop and talk
with him. As we were already near the border, and he was evidently from
Russia, I suggested that Doctor Park show him our passports and ask him
if they would let us into Russia.
He stopped abruptly as we spoke to him, and turned his black, piercing
eyes upon us. Without saying a word he took the passports, glanced them
through rapidly, tapped them with the back of his hand, and handed them
back to us.
"That is no passport," he said, and then he added, "it should have the
visé of your consul."
Having said this much he turned abruptly, without waiting for further
conversation, and strode on. We soon came up with and passed him,
but he did not look up. A little later we halted at the border. I
looked around to see what had become of our wandering Jew, but he had
disappeared. Perhaps he had stopped at the inn, and perhaps he had his
own way of crossing the border.
I was reminded of this strange figure a few months later when I noticed
in one of the London papers a telegram from Vienna to the effect that
some thirty persons had been arrested at Cracow who were suspected
of being the ringleaders "in what is believed to be a widespread
revolutionary organization of Russian refugees." The report added
that "a whole wagon-load of Mannliches rifles, Browning pistols,
and dynamite grenades, together with a large number of compromising
documents and plans of military works, were seized as a result of
searches by the police in the houses of the arrested men."
I had frequently seen reports like this in the newspapers before this
time, but they had a new significance for me now that I had visited
the border country where this commerce with what has been called
the "Underground" or "Revolutionary" Russia was part of the daily
experience of the people. It all recalled to my mind the stories I
had heard, when I was a boy, from my mother's lips of the American
Underground Railway and the adventures of the runaway slaves in their
efforts to cross the border between the free and slave states. It
reminded me, also, of the wilder and more desperate struggles, of which
we used to hear whispers in slavery time, when the slaves sought to
gain their freedom by means of insurrection. That was a time when,
in the Southern States, no matter how good the relations between the
individual master and his slaves, each race lived in constant fear of
the other. It is in this condition, so far as I can learn, that a great
part of the people in Russia are living to-day, for it is fatally true
that no community can live without fear in which one portion of the
people seeks to govern the other portion through terror.
The Austrian and Russian border at Barany, the village at which we
had now arrived, is not imposing. A wire fence, and a gate such as is
sometimes used to guard a railway crossing, are all that separate one
country from the other. On one side of this gate I noticed a little
sentinel's box, marked in broad stripes, with the Austrian colours,
and at the other end of the gate there was a similar little box marked
in broad stripes, with the Russian colours. On the Austrian side there
was a large building for the use of the customs officials. On the
Russian side there was a similar building with the addition of a large
compound. In this compound there were about twenty Russian soldiers,
standing idly about, with their horses saddled and bridled. The reason
for the presence of the soldiers on the Russian side of the border was
due to the fact that it is the business of the customs officers not
merely to collect the tolls on the commerce that crosses the border at
this point, but to prevent any one entering or leaving the country.
As Russia imposes an almost prohibitive tax on emigration, most of the
Russian emigrants are smuggled across the border.
At the same time it is necessary to closely guard the frontier in order
to prevent, as I have said, the importation of books and bombs, the two
elements in western civilization of which Russia seems to stand most in
fear.
Leaving our droske on the Austrian side of the boundary, Doctor Park
and myself applied at the gate between the two countries. A big,
good-natured Russian official grinned, but shook his head and indicated
that we could not be allowed to cross over. Our driver spoke to him in
Polish, but he did not understand, or pretended he did not. Then we
found a man who could speak Russian as well as German, and through him
we explained that we merely wanted to visit the town and be able to say
that we had at least touched Russian soil. On this the man permitted
us to go up to the customs office and make our request there. At the
customs office we tried to look as harmless as possible, and, with the
aid of the interpreter we had brought with us, I explained what we
wanted.
At the customs office every one was polite, good-humoured, and
apparently quite as much interested in us as we were in them. I was
told, however, that I should have to wait until a certain higher
and more important personage arrived. In the course of half an hour
the more important personage appeared. He looked us over carefully,
listened to the explanations of his subordinates, and then, smiling
good-naturedly, gave us permission to look about the village. With this
gracious permission we started out.
The first thing I noticed was that the smooth, hard road upon which
we had travelled from Cracow to the frontier broke off abruptly on
the Russian side of the border. The road through the village was full
of ruts and mudholes and the mournful and mud-bedraggled teams which
were standing near the gate, waiting to cross the border, showed only
too plainly the difficulties of travel in the country through which
they had passed. Now I had learned in Europe that roads are a pretty
good index of the character of the governments that maintain them,
so that it was not difficult to see at the outset that the Russians
were very poor housekeepers, so to speak, at least as compared with
their Austrian neighbours. This was evidently not due to a lack of men
and officials to do the work. Counting the civil officials and the
soldiers, I suppose there must have been somewhere between twenty and
thirty persons, and perhaps more, stationed at this little border
village, to collect the toll on the petty traffic that crossed at this
point. They were, however, but part of the vast army of officials and
soldiers which the Russian Empire maintains along its western border
from the Baltic to the Black Sea, to keep the watch between the east
and the west; to halt, inspect, and tax, not merely the ordinary
traffic, but the interchange of sentiments and ideas.
I could not help thinking how much more profitable it would be if these
soldiers, clerks, and officials, and the vast army of frontiersmen to
which they belonged, could be employed, for example, in building roads
rather than maintaining fences; in making commerce easier, opening the
way to civilization, rather than shutting it out.
Indeed it was no longer strange that, with all the vast resources
which Russia possesses, the masses of the people have made so little
progress when I considered how large a portion of the population had no
other task than that of holding the people down, hindering rather than
inspiring and directing the efforts of the masses to rise.
I had not gone far on our stroll about the village before I discovered
that the Pole who so kindly volunteered to help us was a man of more
than ordinary intelligence. He had seen something of the world, and
I found his rather gossipy comments on the character of the different
individuals we met, and upon the habits of the people generally in the
village, not only entertaining but instructive. He had, for example, a
very frank contempt for what he called the stupidity of the officials
on both sides of the border, and it was clear he was no lover of the
soldiers and the Government. At one time, as we started down a side
street, he said: "There's a gendarme down there. He is just like one
of those stupid, faithful watch-dogs that bristle up and bark at every
person that passes. You will see presently. He will come puffing up the
street to halt you and turn you back."
"What shall we do when we meet him?" I asked.
"Oh, there's nothing to do but go back if he says so, but you will,
perhaps, be interested to observe the way he behaves."
Presently we noticed a soldier clambering hastily over an adjoining
fence, and in a few minutes he had come up with us, his face all
screwed up in an expression of alarmed surprise.
"This is the gendarme I was telling you about," said our guide quietly,
and continued speaking about the man just as if he were not present.
As we were not able to talk with this soldier ourselves, and as he did
not look very promising in any case, we strolled leisurely back while
our guide entered into a long explanation of who and what we were. I
imagine that he must have put a good deal of varnish on his story, for
I noticed that, as the soldier glanced at us from time to time, his
eyes began getting bigger and bigger, and his mouth opened wider and
wider, until he stared at us in a stupid, awestruck way. Finally the
interpreter announced that the gendarme had come to the conclusion that
we might go down the road as far as we wanted to, only he would be
obliged to accompany us to see that we did not break the peace in any
way.
Under the direction of our self-appointed guide we visited a dusty,
musty little bar-room, which seemed to be the centre of such life as
existed in the village. We found a few young country boys lolling about
on benches, and the usual shrewish, sharp-faced, overworked woman, who
grumblingly left her housework to inquire what we wanted.
The contents of the bar itself consisted of rows of little bottles of
different coloured liquors, interspersed with packages of cigarettes,
all of them made and sold under the supervision of the Government.
I purchased one of these little bottles of vodka, as it is called,
because I wanted to see what it was the Government gave the peasants
to drink. It was a white, colourless liquid, which looked like raw
alcohol and was, in fact, as I afterward learned, largely, if not
wholly, what the chemists call "methylated spirits," or wood alcohol.
We visited one of the little peasant houses in the neighbourhood of
the customs office. It was a little, low log hut with a duck pond in
front of the doorway and a cow-pen at right angles to the house. There
were two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. In the kitchen, which had an
earthen floor, three or four or five members of the family were sitting
on stools, gathered about a large bowl, into which each was dipping his
or her spoon. The bedroom was a neat little room, containing a high
bed, a highly decorated chest of drawers, and was filled with curious
bits of the rustic art, including among other things several religious
pictures and images.
Although everything in this house was very simple and primitive,
there was about it an air of self-respecting thrift and neatness that
showed that the family which lived here was relatively prosperous and
well-to-do.
Quite as interesting to me as the houses we visited were the stories
that our guide told us about the people that lived in them. I recall
among others the story of the young widow who served in the customs
office as a clerk and lived in a single room in one corner of the
peasant's cottage to which I have just referred. She was a woman,
he told me, of the higher classes, as her enterprising manner and
intelligent face seemed to indicate; one of the lesser nobility, who
had married a Russian official condemned for some fault or other to
serve at this obscure post. He had died here, leaving a child with the
rickets, and no means.
Another time our guide pointed out to us a more imposing building than
the others we had seen, though it was built in the same rustic style
as the smaller peasants' cottages around it. This house, it seems,
had at one time belonged to one of the nobility, but it was now owned
by a peasant. This peasant, as I understood, had at one time been a
serf and served as a hostler in a wealthy family. From this family
he had inherited, as a reward for his long and faithful service, a
considerable sum of money, with which he had purchased this place and
set himself up, in a small way, as a landlord.
I gained, I think, a more intimate view of the peasant life in Poland
than I did in any other part of Europe that I visited. For that reason,
and because I hoped also that these seeming trivial matters would,
perhaps, prove as interesting and suggestive to others as they were to
me, I have set down in some detail in this and the preceding chapters
the impressions which I gathered there.
In the little village of Barany, in Russian Poland, I had reached the
point farthest removed, if not in distance at least in its institutions
and civilization, from America; but, as I stood on a little elevation
of land at the edge of the village and looked across the rolling
landscape, I felt that I was merely at the entrance of a world in
which, under many outward changes and differences of circumstance,
there was much the same life that I had known and lived among the Negro
farmers in Alabama. I believed, also, that I would find in that life of
the Russian peasants much that would be instructive and helpful to the
masses of my own people.
I touched, before I completed my European experiences, not only the
Austrian, but the Russian and German Polish provinces, but I should
have liked to have gone farther, to Warsaw and Posen, and looked deeper
into the life and learned more of the remarkable struggle which the
Polish people, especially in these two latter provinces, are making
to preserve the Polish nationality and improve the conditions of the
Polish people.
In this connection, and in concluding what I have to say about my
observations in Poland, I want to note one singular, and it seems
to me suggestive, fact: Of the three sections of the Polish race,
German, Russian, and Austrian, there are two in which, according to
the information I was able to obtain, the people are oppressed, and
one in which they seem to be, if anything, the oppressors. In Russian
Poland and in German Poland the Polish are making a desperate struggle
to maintain their national existence, but in these two countries the
Poles are prosperous. Russian Poland has become in recent years one
of the largest manufacturing centres in Europe, and the masses of the
Polish people have become prosperous citizens and labourers. In German
Poland the Polish peasants have, within the past forty years, become
a thrifty farming class. The large estates which were formerly in the
hands of the Polish nobility have been, to a very large extent, divided
up and sold among a rapidly rising class of small landowners. In other
words, what was originally a political movement in these two countries
to revive and reëstablish the kingdom of Poland has become a determined
effort to lift the level of existence among the masses of the Polish
people.
In Austrian Poland, on the contrary, where the Austrian Government, in
order, perhaps, to hold the political aspirations of the Ruthenians in
check, has given them a free hand in the government of the province,
they have vastly greater freedom and they have made less progress.
I am stating this fact baldly, as it was given to me, and without
any attempt at an explanation. Many different factors have no doubt
combined to produce this seeming paradox. I will merely add this
further observation: Where the Poles are advancing, progress has begun
at the bottom, among the peasants; where they have remained stationary
the Polish nobility still rules and the masses of the people have not
yet been forced to any great extent into the struggle for national
existence. The nobles are content with opportunity to play at politics,
in something like the old traditional way, and have not learned the
necessity of developing the resources that exist in the masses of
the people. On the other hand, oppression has not yet aroused the
peasants as it has, particularly in Germany, to a united effort to help
themselves.
I mention this fact not merely because it is interesting, but because
I am convinced that any one who studies the movements and progress of
the Negroes in America will find much that is interesting by way of
comparison in the present situation of the Polish people and that
of the American Negroes. My own observation has convinced me, for
example, that in those states where the leaders of the Negro have been
encouraged to turn their attention to politics the masses of the people
have not made the same progress that they have in those states where
the leaders, because of racial prejudice or for other reasons, have
been compelled to seek their own salvation in educating and building
up, in moral and material directions, the more lowly members of their
own people.
I do not wish to make comparisons, but I think I can safely say, by
way of illustration, that in no other part of the United States have
the masses of the Negroes been more completely deprived of political
privileges than in the state of Mississippi, and yet there is, at the
same time, scarcely any part of the country in which the masses of the
people have built more schools and churches, or where they have gained
a more solid foothold on the soil and in the industries of the state.
In calling attention to this fact I do not intend to offer an excuse
for depriving any members of my race of any of the privileges to
which the law entitles them. I merely wish to emphasize the fact
that there is hope for them in other and more fundamental directions
than ordinary party politics. More especially I wish to emphasize
one fact--namely, that for the Negroes, as for other peoples who are
struggling to get on their feet, success comes to those who learn to
take advantage of their disadvantages and make their difficulties their
opportunities. This is what the Poles in Germany, to a greater extent
than any of the other oppressed nationalities in Europe, seem to have
done.
CHAPTER XVI
THE WOMEN WHO WORK IN EUROPE
Several times during my stay in London I observed, standing on a corner
in one of the most crowded parts of the city, a young woman selling
papers. There are a good many women, young and old, who sell papers in
London, but any one could see at a glance that this girl was different.
There was something in her voice and manner which impressed me, because
it seemed to be at once timid, ingratiating, and a little insolent, if
that is not too strong a word. This young woman was, as I soon learned,
a Suffragette, and she was selling newspapers--"Votes for Women."
This was my first meeting with the women insurgents of England. A day
or two later, however, I happened to fall in with a number of these
Suffragette newspaper-sellers. One of them, in a lively and amusing
fashion, was relating the story of the morning's happenings. I could
hardly help hearing what she said, and soon became very much interested
in the conversation. In fact, I soon found myself so entertained
by the bright and witty accounts these young women gave of their
adventures that it was not long before I began to enter with them into
the spirit of their crusade and to realize for the first time in my
life what a glorious and exciting thing it was to be a Suffragette,
and, I might add, what a lot of fun these young women were having out
of it.
It had not occurred to me, when I set out from America to make the
acquaintance of the man farthest down, that I should find myself in any
way concerned with the woman problem. I had not been in London more
than a few days, however, before I discovered that the woman who is
at the bottom in London life is just as interesting as the man in the
same level of life, and perhaps a more deserving object of study and
observation.
In a certain way all that I saw of the condition of woman at the bottom
connected itself in my mind with the agitation that is going on with
regard to woman at the top.
Except in England, the women's movement has not, so far as I was able
to learn, penetrated to any extent into the lower strata of life, and
that strikes me as one of the interesting facts about the movement. It
shows to what extent the interests, hopes, and ambitions of modern life
have, or rather have not, entered into and become a force in the lives
of the people at the bottom.
Thus it came about that my interest in all that I saw of workingwomen
in Europe was tinged with the thought of what was going to happen when
the present agitation for the emancipation and the wider freedom of
women generally should reach and influence the women farthest down.
In my journey through Europe I was interested, in each of the different
countries I visited, in certain definite and characteristic things.
In London, for example, it was some of the destructive effects of a
highly organized and complicated city life, and the methods which the
Government and organized philanthropy have employed to correct them,
that attracted my attention. Elsewhere it was chiefly the condition of
the agricultural populations that interested me. In all my observation
and study, however, I found that the facts which I have learned about
the condition of women tended to set themselves off and assume a
special importance in my mind. It is for that reason that I propose to
give, as well as I am able, a connected account of them at this point.
What impressed me particularly in London were the extent and effects
of the drinking habit among women of the lower classes. Until I went
to London I do not believe that I had more than once or twice in my
life seen women standing side by side with the men in order to drink
at a public bar. One of the first things I noticed in London was the
number of drunken, loafing women that one passed in the streets of
the poorer quarters. More than once I ran across these drunken and
besotted creatures, with red, blotched faces, which told of years of
steady excess--ragged, dirty, and disorderly in their clothing--leaning
tipsily against the outside of a gin-parlour or sleeping peacefully on
the pavement of an alleyway.
In certain parts of London the bar-room seems to be the general meeting
place of men and women alike. There, in the evening, neighbours gather
and gossip while they drink their black, bitter beer. It is against the
law for parents to take their children into the bar-rooms, but I have
frequently observed women standing about the door of the tap-room with
their babies in their arms, leisurely chatting while they sipped their
beer. In such cases they frequently give the lees of their glass to the
children to drink.
In America we usually think of a bar-room as a sort of men's club, and,
if women go into such a place at all, they are let in surreptitiously
at the "family entrance." Among the poorer classes in England the
bar-room is quite as much the woman's club as it is the man's. The
light, the warmth, and the free and friendly gossip of these places
make them attractive, too, and I can understand that the people in
these densely populated quarters of the city, many of them living in
one or two crowded little rooms, should be drawn to these places by the
desire for a little human comfort and social intercourse.
In this respect the bar-rooms in the poorer parts of London are like
the beer halls that one meets on the Continent. There is, however, this
difference--that the effect of drink upon the people of England seems
to be more destructive than it is in the case of the people on the
Continent. It is not that the English people as a whole consume more
intoxicating drink than the people elsewhere, because the statistics
show that Denmark leads the rest of Europe in the amount of spirits,
just as Belgium leads in the amount of beer, consumed per capita of the
population. One trouble seems to be that, under the English industrial
system, the people take greater chances, they are subject to greater
stress and strain, and this leads to irregularities and to excessive
drinking.
While I was in Vienna I went out one Sunday evening to the Prater, the
great public park, which seems to be a sort of combination of Central
Park, New York, and Coney Island. In this park one may see all types of
Austrian life, from the highest to the lowest. Sunday seems, however,
to be the day of the common people, and the night I visited the place
there were, in addition to the ordinary labouring people of the city,
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of peasant people from the country there.
They were mostly young men and women who had evidently come into the
city for the Sunday holiday. Beside the sober, modern dress of the city
crowds these peasant women, with their high boots, the bright-coloured
kerchiefs over their heads, and their wide, flaring, voluminous skirts
(something like those of a female circus-rider, only a little longer
and not so gauzy), made a strange and picturesque appearance.
Meanwhile there was a great flare of music of a certain sort; and a
multitude of catchpenny shows, mountebanks, music halls, theatres,
merry-go-rounds, and dancing pavilions gave the place the appearance
of a stupendous county fair. I do not think that I ever saw anywhere,
except at a picnic or a barbecue among the Negroes of the Southern
States, people who gave themselves up so frankly and with such entire
zest to this simple, physical sort of enjoyment. Everywhere there were
eating, drinking, and dancing, but nevertheless I saw no disorder;
very few people seemed to be the worse for drinking, and in no instance
did I see people who showed, in the disorder of their dress or in the
blotched appearance of their faces, the effects of continued excesses,
such as one sees in so many parts of London. Individuals were, for the
most part, neatly and cleanly dressed; each class of people seemed to
have its own place of amusement and its own code of manners, and every
one seemed to keep easily and naturally within the restraints which
custom prescribed.
I do not mean to say that I approve of this way of spending the
Sabbath. I simply desire to point out the fact, which others have
noticed, that the effect of the drinking habit seems to be quite
different in England from what it is in countries on the Continent.
I had an opportunity to observe the evil effects of the drinking habit
upon the Englishwomen of the lower classes when I visited some of
the police courts in the poorer parts of London. When I remarked to
a newspaper acquaintance in London that I wanted to see as much as I
could, while I was in the city, of the life of the poorer people, he
advised me to visit the Worship Street and Thames police stations. The
Worship Street station is situated in one of the most crowded parts
of London, in close proximity to Bethnal Green and Spitalfields, which
have for many years been the homes of the poorer working classes, and
especially of those poor people known as houseworkers and casuals, who
live in garrets and make paper boxes, artificial flowers, etc., or pick
up such odd jobs as they can find. The Thames station is situated a
little way from London Dock and not far from the notorious Ratcliffe
Highway, which until a few years ago was the roughest and most
dangerous part of London.
Perhaps I ought to say, at the outset, that two things in regard to
the London police courts especially impressed me: first, the order
and dignity with which the court is conducted; second, the care with
which the judge inquires into all the facts of every case he tries,
the anxiety which he shows to secure the rights of the defendant, and
the leniency with which those found guilty are treated. In many cases,
particularly those in which men or women were charged with drunkenness,
the prisoners were allowed to go with little more than a mild and
fatherly reprimand.
After listening for several hours to the various cases that came up
for hearing, I could well understand that the police have sometimes
complained that their efforts to put down crime were not supported by
the magistrates, who, they say, always take the side of the culprits.
In this connection I might mention a statement which I ran across
recently of a man who had served at one time as a magistrate in both
the Worship Street and Thames police courts. He said that there was a
great deal of drunkenness among certain of the factory girls of East
London, although they were seldom arrested and brought into court for
that offence.
He added: "It must not be forgotten that the number of convictions
for drunkenness is not by any means a proper measure of insobriety.
If a policeman sees a drunken man conducting himself quietly or
sleeping in a doorway, he passes on and takes no notice. Those who
are convicted belong, as a rule, to the disorderly classes, who, the
moment liquor rises to their heads, manifest their natural propensities
by obstreperous and riotous conduct. For one drunkard of this order
there must be fifty who behave quietly and always manage to reach their
homes, however zigzag may be their journey thither."
That statement was made a number of years ago, but I am convinced that
it holds good now, because I noticed that most of the persons arrested
and brought into court, especially women, were bloodstained and badly
battered.
In the majority of these cases, as I have said, the persons were
allowed to go with a reprimand or a small fine. The only case in which,
it seemed to me, the judge showed a disposition to be severe was in
that of a poor woman who was accused of begging. She was a pale,
emaciated, and entirely wretched appearing little woman, and the charge
against her was that of going through the streets, leading one of her
children by the hand, and asking for alms because she and her children
were starving. I learned from talking with the officer who investigated
the case that the statement she made was very likely true. He had known
her for some time, and she was in a very sad condition. But then, it
seems, the law required that in such circumstances she should have gone
to the workhouse.
I think that there were as many as fifteen or twenty women brought into
court on each of the mornings I visited the court. Most of them were
arrested for quarrelling and fighting, and nearly all of them showed in
their bloated faces and in their disorderly appearance that steady and
besotted drunkenness was at the bottom of their trouble.
I have found since I returned from Europe that the extent of
drunkenness among Englishwomen has frequently been a matter of
observation and comment. Richard Grant White, in his volume "England
Within and Without," says:
I was struck with horror at the besotted condition of so many
of the women--women who were bearing children every year, and
suckling them, and who seemed to me little better than foul human
stills through which the accursed liquor with which they were
soaked filtered drop by drop into the little drunkards at their
breasts. To these children drunkenness comes unconsciously, like
their mother tongue. They cannot remember a time when it was
new to them. They come out of the cloudland of infancy with the
impression that drunkenness is one of the normal conditions of
man, like hunger and sleep.
This was written thirty years ago. It is said that conditions
have greatly improved in recent years in respect to the amount of
drunkenness among the poor of London. Nevertheless, I notice in the
last volume of the "Annual Charities Register" for London the statement
that inebriety seems to be increasing among women, and that it prevails
to such an alarming extent among women in all ranks of society that
"national action is becoming essential for the nation's very existence."
The statistics of London crime show that, while only about half as many
women as men are arrested on the charges of "simple drunkenness" and
"drunkenness with aggravations," more than three times as many women as
men are arrested on the charge of "habitual" drunkenness. Another thing
that impressed me was that the American police courts deal much more
severely with women. This is certainly true in the Southern States,
where almost all the women brought before the police courts are Negroes.
The class of people to whom I have referred represent, as a matter
of course, the lowest and most degraded among the working classes.
Nevertheless, they represent a very large element in the population,
and the very existence of this hopeless class, which constitutes the
dregs of life in the large cities, is an indication of the hardship and
bitterness of the struggle for existence in the classes above them.
I have attempted in what I have already said to indicate the situation
of the women at the bottom in the complex life of the largest and, if
I may say so, the most civilized city in the world, where women are
just now clamouring for all the rights and privileges of men. But there
are parts of Europe where, as far as I have been able to learn, women
have as yet never heard that they had any rights or interests in life
separate and distinct from those of their husbands and children. I have
already referred to the increasing number of barefoot women I met as I
journeyed southward from Berlin. At first these were for the most part
women who worked in the fields. But by the time I reached Vienna I
found that it was no uncommon thing to meet barefoot women in the most
crowded and fashionable parts of the city.
Experience in travelling had taught me that the wearing of shoes is a
pretty accurate indication of civilization. The fact that in a large
part of southern Europe women who come from the country districts have
not yet reached the point where they feel comfortable in shoes is an
indication of the backwardness of the people.
What interested and surprised me more than the increasing absence of
shoes among the countrywomen was the increasing number of women whom I
saw engaged in rough and unskilled labour of every kind. I had never
seen Negro women doing the sort of work I saw the women of southern
Europe doing. When I reached Prague, for example, I noticed a load of
coal going through the streets. A man was driving it, but women were
standing up behind with shovels. I learned then that it was the custom
to employ women to load and unload the coal and carry it into the
houses. The driving and the shovelling were done by the man, but the
dirtiest and the hardest part of the work was performed by the women.
In Vienna I saw hundreds of women at work as helpers in the
construction of buildings; they mixed the mortar, loaded it in tubs,
placed it on their heads, and carried it up two or three stories to men
at work on the walls. The women who engage in this sort of labour wear
little round mats on their heads, which support the burdens which they
carry. Some of these women are still young, simply grown girls, fresh
from the country, but the majority of them looked like old women.
Not infrequently I ran across women hauling carts through the streets.
Sometimes there would be a dog harnessed to the cart beside them. That,
for example, is the way in which the countrywomen sometimes bring their
garden truck to market. More often, however, they will be seen bringing
their garden products to market in big baskets on their heads or swung
over their shoulders. I remember, while I was in Budapest, that, in
returning to my hotel rather late one night, I passed through an open
square near the market, where there were hundreds of these market women
asleep on the sidewalks or in the street. Some of them had thrown down
a truss of straw on the pavement under their wagons and gone to sleep
there. Others, who had brought their produce into town from the country
on their backs, had in many cases merely put their baskets on the
sidewalk, lain down, thrown a portion of their skirts up over their
heads, and gone to sleep. At this hour the city was still wide awake.
From a nearby beer hall there came the sounds of music and occasional
shouts of laughter. Meanwhile people were passing and repassing in the
street and on the sidewalk, but they paid no more attention to these
sleeping women than they would if they had been horses or cows.
In other parts of Austria-Hungary I ran across women engaged in
various sorts of rough and unskilled labour. While I was in Cracow,
in Austrian Poland, I saw women at work in the stone quarries. The
men were blasting out the rock, but the women were assisting them in
removing the earth and in loading the wagons. At the same time I saw
women working in brickyards. The men made the brick, the women acted
as helpers. While I was in Cracow one of the most interesting places
I visited in which women are employed was a cement factory. The man
in charge was kind enough to permit me to go through the works, and
explained the process of crushing and burning the stone used in the
manufacture of cement. A large part of the rough work in this cement
factory is done by girls. The work of loading the kilns is performed
by them. Very stolid, heavy, and dirty-looking creatures they were.
They had none of the freshness and health that I noticed so frequently
among the girls at work in the fields.
While I was studying the different kinds of work which women are doing
in Austria-Hungary I was reminded of the complaint that I had heard
sometimes from women in America, that they were denied their rights
in respect to labour, that men in America wanted to keep women in the
house, tied down to household duties.
In southern Europe, at any rate, there does not seem to be any
disposition to keep women tied up in the houses. Apparently they are
permitted to do any kind of labour that men are permitted to do; and
they do, in fact, perform a great many kinds of labour that we in
America think fit only for men. I noticed, moreover, as a rule, that
it was only the rough, unskilled labour which was allotted to them.
If women worked in the stone quarries, men did the part of the work
that required skill. Men used the tools, did the work of blasting the
rock. If women worked on the buildings, they did only the roughest and
cheapest kinds of work. I did not see any women laying brick, nor did I
see anywhere women carpenters or stone-masons.
In America Negro women and children are employed very largely at
harvest time in the cotton-fields, but I never saw in America, as I
have seen in Austria, women employed as section hands on a railway, or
digging sewers, hauling coal, carrying the hod, or doing the rough work
in brickyards, kilns, and cement factories.
In the Southern States of America the lowest form of unskilled labour
is that of the men who are employed on what is known as public
works--that is to say, the digging of sewers, building of railways,
and so forth. I was greatly surprised, while I was in Vienna, to see
women engaged side by side with men in digging a sewer. This was such a
novel sight to me that I stopped to watch these women handle the pick
and shovel. They were, for the most part, young women, of that heavy,
stolid type I have referred to. I watched them for some time, and I
could not see but that they did their work as rapidly and as easily as
the men beside them. After this I came to the conclusion that there was
not anything a man could do which a woman could not do also.
In Poland the women apparently do most of the work on the farms. Many
of the men have gone to Vienna to seek their fortune. Many, also, have
gone to the cities, and still others are in the army, because on the
Continent every able-bodied man must serve in the army. The result is
that more and more of the work that was formerly performed by men is
now done by women.
One of the most interesting sights I met in Europe was the market in
Cracow. This market is a large open square in the very centre of the
ancient city. In this square is situated the ancient Cloth Hall, a
magnificent old building, which dates back to the Middle Ages, when
it was used as a place for the exhibition of merchandise, principally
textiles of various kinds. On the four sides of this square are some of
the principal buildings of the city, including the City Hall and the
Church of the Virgin Mary, from the tall tower of which the hours are
sounded by the melodious notes of a bugle.
On market days this whole square is crowded with hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of market women, who come in from the country in the early
morning with their produce, remain until it is sold, and then return to
their homes.
In this market one may see offered for sale anything and everything
that the peasant people produce in their homes or on the farms. Among
other things for sale I noted the following: geese, chickens, bread,
cheese, potatoes, salads, fruits of various sorts, mushrooms, baskets,
toys, milk, and butter.
What interested me as much as anything was to observe that nearly
everything that was sold in this market was carried into the city on
the backs of the women. Practically, I think, one may say that the
whole city of Cracow, with a population of 90,000 persons, is fed on
the provisions that the peasant women carry into the city, some of them
travelling as far as ten or fifteen miles daily.
One day, while driving in the market of Cracow, our carriage came up
with a vigorous young peasant woman who was tramping, barefoot, briskly
along the highway with a bundle swung on her shoulder. In this bundle,
I noticed, she carried a milk-can. We stopped, and the driver spoke
to her in Polish and then translated to my companion, Doctor Park, in
German. At first the woman seemed apprehensive and afraid. As soon as
we told her we were from America, however, her face lighted up and she
seemed very glad to answer all my questions.
I learned that she was a widow, the owner of a little farm with two
cows. She lived something like fourteen kilometres (about ten miles)
from the city, and every day she came into town to dispose of the milk
she had from her two cows. She did not walk all the way, but rode half
the distance in the train, and walked the other half. She owned a
horse, she said, but the horse was at work on the farm, and she could
not afford to use him to drive to town. In order to take care of and
milk her cows and reach the city early enough to deliver her milk she
had to get up very early in the morning, so that she generally got back
home about ten or eleven o'clock. Then, in the afternoon, she took care
of the house and worked in the garden. This is a pretty good example, I
suspect, of the way some of these peasant women work.
All day long one sees these women, with their bright-coloured peasant
costumes, coming and going through the streets of Cracow with their
baskets on their backs. Many of them are barefoot, but most of them
wear very high leather boots, which differ from those I have seen worn
by peasant women in other parts of Austria and Hungary in the fact that
they have very small heels.
I had an opportunity to see a great many types of women in the course
of my journey across Europe, but I saw none who looked so handsome,
fresh, and vigorous as these Polish peasant women.
It is said of the Polish women, as it is said of the women of the
Slavic races generally, that they are still living in the mental and
physical slavery of former ages. Probably very few of them have ever
heard of women's rights. But, if that is true, it simply shows how
very little connection such abstract words have with the condition,
welfare, and happiness of the people who enjoy the freedom and
independence of country life. At any rate, I venture to say that there
are very few women, even in the higher ranks of labouring women in
England, whose condition in life compares with that of these vigorous,
wholesome, and healthy peasant women.
How can work in the stifling atmosphere of a factory or in some crowded
city garret compare with the life which these women lead, working in
the fields and living in the free and open country?
The emigration to America has left an enormous surplus of women in
Europe. In England, for instance, the women stand in the proportion of
sixteen to fifteen to the men. In some parts of Italy there are cities,
it is said, where all the able-bodied men have left the country and
gone to America. The changes brought by emigration have not, on the
whole, it seems to me, affected the life of women favourably. But the
same thing is true with regard to the changes brought about by the
growth of cities and the use of machinery. Men have profited by the use
of machinery more than women. The machines have taken away from the
women the occupations they had in the homes, and this has driven them
to take up other forms of labour, of more or less temporary character,
in which they are overworked and underpaid.
Everywhere we find the women in Europe either doing the obsolete things
or performing some form of unskilled labour. For example, there are
still one hundred thousand people, mostly women, in East London, it
is said, who are engaged in home industries--in other words, sweating
their lives away in crowded garrets trying to compete with machinery
and organization in the making of clothes or artificial flowers, and in
other kinds of work of this same general description.
The movement for women's suffrage in England, which began in the upper
classes among the women of the West End, has got down, to some extent,
to the lower levels among the women who work with the hands. Women's
suffrage meetings have been held, I have learned, in Bethnal Green and
Whitechapel. But I do not believe that voting alone will improve the
condition of workingwomen.
There must be a new distribution of the occupations. Too many women in
Europe are performing a kind of labour for which they are not naturally
fitted and for which they have had no special training. There are too
many women in the ranks of unskilled labour. My own conviction is
that what the workingwomen of Europe need most is a kind of education
that will lift a larger number of them into the ranks of skilled
labour--that will teach them to do something, and to do that something
well.
The Negro women in America have a great advantage in this respect.
They are everywhere admitted to the same schools to which the men are
admitted. All the Negro colleges are crowded with women. They are
admitted to the industrial schools and to training in the different
trades on the same terms as men. One of the chief practical results of
the agitation for the suffrage in Europe will be, I imagine, to turn
the attention of the women in the upper classes to the needs of the
women in the lower classes. In Europe there is much work for women
among their own sex, for, as I have said elsewhere, in Europe the man
farthest down is woman.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK
In Europe the man whose situation most nearly corresponds to that of
the Negro in the Southern States is the peasant. I had seen pictures of
peasants before I went to Europe, but I confess that I was very hazy
as to what a peasant was. I knew that he was a small farmer, like the
majority of the Negro farmers in the Southern States, and that, like
the Negro farmer again, he had in most cases descended from a class
that had at one time been held in some sort of subjection to the large
landowners, the difference being that, whereas the peasant had been a
serf, the Negro farmer had been a slave.
In regard to the present position of the peasant in the life about him,
in regard to his manner of living, his opportunities and ambitions,
I had but the vaguest sort of an idea. The pictures which I had seen
were not reassuring in this regard. The picture which made the deepest
impression upon my mind was that of a heavy, stupid, half-human looking
creature, standing in the midst of a desolate field. The mud and
the clay were clinging to him and he was leaning on a great, heavy,
wrought-iron hoe, such as were formerly used by the Negro slaves. This
picture represented about my idea of a peasant.
In the course of my journey through Italy and through Austria-Hungary I
saw a number of individuals who reminded me of this and other pictures
of peasants that I can recall. I saw, as I have already said, peasant
women sleeping, like tired animals, in the city streets; I saw others
living in a single room with their cattle; at one time I entered a
little cottage and saw the whole family eating out of a single bowl.
In Sicily I found peasants living in a condition of dirt, poverty, and
squalor almost beyond description. But everywhere I found among these
people, even the lowest, individuals who, when I had an opportunity to
talk with them, invariably displayed an amount of shrewd, practical
wisdom, kindly good nature, and common sense that reminded me of
some of the old Negro farmers with whom I am acquainted at home. It
is very curious what a difference it makes in the impression that a
man makes upon you if you stop and shake hands with him, instead of
merely squinting at him critically in order to take a cold sociological
inventory of his character and condition.
Some of the pleasantest recollections I have of Europe are the talks
I had, through an interpreter, of course, with some of these same
ignorant but hard-working, sometimes barefoot, but always kindly
peasants. The result was that long before I had completed my journey
I had ceased to take some of the pictures of peasants I had seen
literally. I discovered that the artist whose pictures had made so
deep an impression upon me had sought to compress into the figure of a
single individual the misery and wretchedness of a whole class; that
he had tried, also, to bring to the surface and make visible in his
picture all the hardships and the degradation which the casual observer
does not see, perhaps does not want to see.
It was not until I reached Denmark, however, that I began to feel that
I had really begun to know the European peasant, because it was not
until I reached that country that I saw what the possibilities of the
peasant were. Before this I had seen a man who was struggling up under
the weight of ignorance and the remains of an ancient oppression. In
Denmark, however, this man has come to his own. Peasants already own
a majority of the land. Three fourths of the farms are in their hands
and the number of small farms is steadily increasing. In Denmark the
peasant, as a certain gentleman whom I met there observed, is not
only free, but he rules. The peasant is the leader in everything that
relates to the progress of agriculture. The products of the coöperative
dairies, the coöperative egg-collecting and pork-packing societies,
organized and controlled by the peasants, bring in the markets of the
world higher prices than similar products from any other country in
Europe.
The peasants are now the controlling influence in the Danish
Parliament. When I was there half the members of the ministry in power
were peasants, and half the members of the cabinet were either peasants
or peasants' sons.
Let me add that there is a very close connection between the price of
the peasants' butter and the influence which the peasants exercise
in politics. For a good many years, up to about 1901, I believe, the
most influential party in Denmark was that represented by the large
landowners. Forty years ago the peasants had all the political rights
they now possess, but they did not count for much in political matters.
At that time there were two kinds of butter in Denmark: there was
the butter made in the creameries of the large landowners, called
gentlemen's estates, and there was the butter from the small farmers.
In other words, there was "gentleman's butter" and "peasant's butter."
The peasant butter, however, was only worth in the market about one
half as much as that from the gentleman's estate. When the price of
peasant butter began to rise, however, the political situation began to
change. Year by year the number of coöperative dairies increased and,
year by year, the number of peasant farmers in parliament multiplied.
In other words, the Danish peasant has become a power in Danish
politics because he first became a leader in the industrial development
of the country.
Denmark is not only very small, about one third the size of Alabama,
but it is not even especially fertile. It is an extremely level
country, without hills, valleys, or running streams worth speaking
of. I was told that the highest point in Denmark, which is called
"Heaven's Hill," is only about 550 feet above sea level--that is to
say about half as high as the tower of the Metropolitan Building in
New York. As a result of this a large part of the country is windswept
and, in northern Jutland, where the Danish peninsula thrusts a thin
streak of land up into the storm-tossed waters of the North Sea, there
were, forty years ago, 3,300 square miles of heather where not even a
tree would grow. Since that time, by an elaborate process of physical
and chemical manipulation of the soil, all but a thousand square
miles have been reclaimed. The result is that where once only lonely
shepherds wandered, "knitting stockings," as Jacob Riis says, "to pay
the taxes," there are now flourishing little cities.
Another disadvantage which Denmark suffers has its origin in the fact
that more than one third of the country consists of islands, of which
there are no less than forty-four. In going from Copenhagen to Hamburg
the train on which I travelled, in crossing from one island to another
and from there to the peninsula, was twice compelled to make the
passage by means of a ferry, and at one of these passages we were on
the boat for about an hour and a half.
Riding or driving through Denmark to-day is like riding through
Illinois or any other of the farming regions of the Middle Western
States, with the exception that the fields are smaller and the number
of men, cattle, and homesteads is much larger than one will see in any
part of the United States. I have heard travellers through Denmark
express regret because with the progress of the country, the quaint
peasant costumes and the other characteristics of the primitive life
of the peasant communities, which one may still see in other parts of
Europe, have disappeared. One of my fellow-travellers tried to make
me believe that the peasants in Europe were very much happier in the
quiet, simple life of these small and isolated farming communities,
each with its own picturesque costumes, its interesting local
traditions, and its curious superstitions.
This seems to be the view of a good many tourists. After what I have
seen in Europe I have come to the conclusion, however, that the people
and the places that are the most interesting to look at are not always
the happiest and most contented. On the contrary, I have found that
the places in which the life of the peasants is most interesting to
tourists are usually the places that the peasants are leaving in the
largest numbers. Emigration to America is making a large part of Europe
commonplace, but it is making a better place to live in.
The reorganization of agricultural life in Denmark has come about in
other ways than by emigration, but it has left very little of the
picturesque peasant life, and most of what remains is now kept in
museums. I noticed in going through the country, however, two types of
farm buildings which seem to have survived from an earlier time. One of
these consisted of a long, low building, one end of which was a barn
and the other a dwelling. The other type of building was of much the
same shape, except that it formed one side of a court, the other two
sides of which were enclosed by barns and stables.
Upon inquiry I learned that the first type of dwelling belonged to a
man who was called a _husmaend_, or houseman; in other words, a small
farmer whose property consisted of his house, with a very small strip
of land around it. The other type of dwelling belonged to a man who was
called a _gaardmaend_, or yardman, because he owned enough land to have
a _gaarde_, or yard. In Denmark farmers are still generally divided
into _huse_ and _gaarde_; all farmers owning less than twenty-four
acres are called "housemen," and all having more than that are called
"yardmen," no matter how their buildings are constructed.
As a matter of fact, it is not so long since conditions in Denmark were
just about as primitive as they are now in some other parts of Europe.
Jacob Riis, whom I learned, while I was in Denmark, is just as widely
known and admired in Denmark as he is in the United States, says that
he can remember when conditions were quite different among the homes of
the people. "For example," he said, "I recall the time when in every
peasant's family it was the custom for all to sit down and eat out of
the same bowl in the centre of the table and then, after the meal was
finished, each would wipe the spoon with which he had dipped into the
common bowl, and without any further ceremony tuck it away on a little
shelf over his head.
"To-day," he added, "Danish farmers wash their pigs. The udders of the
cows are washed with a disinfecting fluid before milking. When a man
goes to milk he puts on a clean white suit."
Not only is this true, but the Danish farmer grooms his cows, and
blankets them when it is cold. He does this not only because it is
good for the cow, but because it makes a saving in the feed. Although
Denmark has more cattle in proportion to the number of inhabitants
than any other part of Europe, I noticed very few pastures. On the
contrary, as I passed through the country I observed long rows of
tethered cattle, feeding from the green crops. As rapidly as the cows
have consumed all the green fodder, usually four or five times a day, a
man comes along and moves the stakes forward so that the cattle advance
in orderly way, mowing down the crops in sections. Water is brought
to the cows in a cart and they are milked three times a day. All of
this requires a large increase of labour as well as constant study,
care, and attention. In other words, the Danish peasant has become a
scientific farmer.
One difference between the farmer in Denmark and in other countries
is that, whereas the ordinary farmer raises his crops and ships them
to the market to be sold, the Danish farmer sells nothing but the
manufactured product, and as far as possible he sells it direct to
the consumer. For example, until about 1880 Denmark was still a grain
exporting country; in recent years, however, it has become a grain
importing country. Grain and fodder of various kinds to the value
of something like twenty-five millions of dollars are now annually
purchased by Danish farmers in Russia and neighbouring countries. The
agricultural products thus imported are fed to the cattle, swine, and
chickens and thus converted into butter, pork, and eggs. The butter
is manufactured in a coöperative dairy; the pork is slaughtered in
a coöperative pork-packing house; the eggs are collected and packed
by a coöperative egg-collecting association. Then they are either
sold direct, or are turned over to a central coöperative selling
association, which disposes of the most of them in England. The annual
exports to England amount to nearly $90,000,000 a year, of which
$51,000,000 is for butter, nearly $30,000,000 for bacon, and the
remainder for eggs.
As a gentleman whom I met in Denmark put it: "If Denmark, like
ancient Gaul, were divided into three parts, one of these would be
butter, another pork, and the third eggs." It is from these things
that the country, in the main, gets its living. There are in Denmark,
as elsewhere, railways, newspapers, telephones, merchants, preachers,
teachers, and all the other accessories of a high civilization, but
they are all supported from the sale of butter, pork, and eggs,
to which ought to be added cattle, for Denmark still exports a
considerable amount of beef and live cattle. The export of live cattle
has, however, fallen from about $21,000,000 a year in 1880 to about
$7,000,000, but in the same period the excess of butter, bacon, and
eggs has risen from something like $7,000,000 to over $70,000,000.
Meanwhile the raw production of the Danish farms has increased 50 per
cent. and more, the difference being that, instead of producing grains
for the manufacture of flour and meal, the Danish farmers have turned
their attention to producing root crops to feed their cattle. This
means that the peasant in Denmark is not merely a scientific farmer, as
I have already suggested, but he is at the same time, in a small way, a
business man.
The success of the peasant farmer in Denmark is, as I have already
suggested, due to a very large extent to the coöperative societies
which manufacture and sell his farm products. Through the medium of
these the Danish peasant has become a business man--I might almost
say, a capitalist. I do not know how much money is invested in these
different coöperative dairies, egg-collecting and pork-packing
concerns, but all Denmark is dotted with them, and the total amount of
money invested in them must be considerable. There are, for example,
1,157 coöperative dairies, with a membership of 157,000. The number of
coöperative pork-packing societies is 34, with a membership of 95,000.
As soon as I found to what extent the peasants were manufacturing and
selling their own products, I naturally wanted to know how they had
succeeded in getting the capital to carry on these large enterprises,
because in the part of the country from which I hail the average farmer
not only has no money to put into any sort of business outside his
farm, but has to borrow money, frequently at a high rate of interest,
to carry on his farming operations. I found that when the farmers in
Denmark began establishing coöperative dairies some of the well-to-do
farmers came together and signed a contract to send all their milk
which they were not able to use at home to the community dairy.
Then they borrowed money on their land to raise the money to begin
operations. In borrowing this money they bound themselves "jointly
and severally," as the legal phrase is, to secure the payments of the
money borrowed--that is, each man became individually responsible
for the whole loan. This gave the bank which made the loan a much
better security than if each individual had secured a loan on his own
responsibility, and in this way it was possible to provide the capital
needed at a very moderate rate of interest.
When the farmer brought his milk to the common dairy he was paid a
price for it a little less than the average market price. This added
something to the working capital. At the end of the year a portion
of the earnings of the dairy were set aside to pay interest charges,
another portion was used to pay off the loan, and the remainder was
divided in profits among the members of the association, each receiving
an amount proportionate to the milk he had contributed. In this way the
farmer in the course of some years found himself with a sum of money,
equal to his individual share, invested in a paying enterprise that
was every year increasing in value. In the meanwhile he had received
more for his milk than if he had sold it in the ordinary way. At the
same time, out of the annual profits he received from his share in the
dairy, he had, perhaps, been able to put some money in the savings
bank. The savings banks have always been popular and have played a much
more important part in the life of the people than they have elsewhere.
At the present time the average amount of deposits in proportion to the
number of inhabitants is larger than is true of any other country in
the world. For example, the average amount of deposits in the Danish
savings banks is $77.88; in England $20.62; in the United States
$31.22. At the same time the number of depositors in Danish savings
banks is considerably larger than in other countries. For example,
there are fifty-one depositors for every hundred persons in Denmark. In
England the corresponding number is twenty-seven.
The most remarkable thing about the Danish savings banks, however, is
that 78 per cent.--nearly four fifths--of them are located in the rural
districts. That is one reason that Danish farmers have not found it
difficult to secure the capital they needed to organize and carry on
their coöperative enterprises. With the money which they had saved and
put in the savings bank from the earnings in the coöperative dairies
they were able to borrow money with which to start their coöperative
slaughterhouses and egg-collecting societies.
But these are only a few of the different types of coöperative
organizations. A Danish peasant may be a member of a society for the
purchase of tools, implements, and other necessaries, of which there
are fifteen in Denmark, with a membership numbering between sixty and
seventy thousand. He may belong to a society for exporting cattle,
for collecting and exporting eggs, for horse breeding, for cattle,
sheep, and pig breeding. Finally he may belong to what are known as
"control" societies, organized for the purpose of keeping account, by
means of careful registration, of the milk yield of each cow belonging
to a member of the society, and of the butter-fat in the milk, and the
relation between the milk yield and the fodder consumed. The value of
these societies is found in the fact that the annual yield per cow in
the case of members of the control society was 67,760 pounds, while in
the case of cows owned outside of the society the amount was 58,520
pounds.
Through the medium of these different societies, some of which are
purely commercial, while others exist for the purpose of improving
the methods and technique of agriculture, the farming industry has
become thoroughly organized. First of all, there has been a great
saving in cost of handling and selling farm products. Not many years
ago the Danish farmer used to send his butter to England by way of
Hamburg, and there were at that time, I have been told, no less than
six middlemen who came between the farmer and his customer. Now the
coöperative manufacturing and selling societies sell a large part
of their products direct to the coöperative purchasing societies in
England. In this way the farmer and his customer, the producer and
distributer, are brought together again, not exactly in the way in
which they still come together in some of the old-fashioned market
places in Europe, but still in a way to benefit both classes. For
one thing, as a result of this organization of the farming industry,
farming methods and the whole technical side of the industry have been
greatly benefited. A striking evidence of this fact is found in the
following statistics showing the rapid increase in the annual yield of
milk per cow in the period from 1898 to 1908:
Year Annual yield
per cow in
pounds
1898 4,480
1901 4,884
1904 5,335
1907 5,689
1908 5,874
I might add, as showing the extent to which Danish agriculture has been
organized in the way I have described, that now Denmark produces about
253,000,000 pounds of butter every year. Of this amount 220,000,000
pounds come from the coöperative dairies.
Behind all other organizations which have served to increase efficiency
of the farming population are the schools, particularly the rural high
schools and the agricultural schools. It is generally agreed in Denmark
that the coöperative organizations which have done so much for the
farming population of that country could not exist if the rural high
schools had not prepared the way for them.
I have described at some length, in another place, my impressions
of the Danish schools, and shall not attempt to repeat here what I
have said elsewhere.[5] I would like to emphasize, however, certain
peculiarities about these schools that have particularly impressed me.
In the first place, the schools that I visited, and, as I understand,
practically all the schools that have been erected for the benefit of
the rural population, are located either in the neighbourhood of the
small towns or in the open country. In other words, they are close to
the land and the people they are designed to help. In the second place,
and this is just as true of the rural high schools, where almost no
technical training is attempted, as it is of the agricultural schools,
the courses have been especially worked out, after years of experiment
and study, to fit the needs of the people for whom they are intended.
There is no attempt to import into these schools the learning or style
or methods of the city high schools or colleges. There is in fact, so
far as I know, no school in existence that corresponds to or of which
the Danish rural high school is in any way a copy.
In the third place, all these schools are for older pupils. The ages of
the students range from sixteen to twenty-four years, and, in addition
to the regular courses, conferences and short courses for the older
people have been established, as is the case with many of the Negro
industrial schools in the South. In fact, everything possible is done
to wed the work in the school to the life and work on the land.
Finally, and this seems to me quite as important as anything else,
these schools, like the coöperative societies to which I have referred,
have grown up as the result of private initiative. The high schools had
their origin in a popular movement begun more than fifty years ago by
Nicola Frederik Severin Grundvig, a great religious reformer, who is
sometimes referred to as the Luther of Denmark.
Denmark was at this time almost in despair. England in the course
of the war with Napoleon had destroyed the Danish fleet, and later,
in 1864, Germany had taken from Denmark two of her best provinces
and one third of her territory. Grundvig believed that the work of
reconstructing and regenerating Denmark must begin at the bottom. He
preached the doctrine that what Denmark had lost without she must
regain within, and, with this motto, he set to work to develop the
neglected resources of the country--namely, those which were in the
people themselves.
The work begun by Grundvig has been taken up and carried on in the same
spirit by those who have followed him. The results of this movement
show themselves in every department of life in Denmark--in the rapid
increase of Danish exports and in the healthy democratic spirit of
the whole Danish population. The Danish people are probably the best
educated and best informed people in Europe. This is not simply my
impression; it is that of more experienced travellers than myself.
On my way from Copenhagen to London I fell in with an English gentleman
who was just returning from five weeks of study and observation of
farming conditions in Denmark. From him I was able to obtain a great
many interesting details which confirmed my own impressions.
He told me, I remember, that he had noticed in the cottage of a
peasant, a man who did not farm more than four or five acres of
land, copies of at least four periodicals to which he was a regular
subscriber.
"More than that," he continued, "the farmers' journals which I saw in
the peasants' houses I visited seemed to me remarkably technical and
literary." This remark struck me, because it had never occurred to me
that any of the agricultural papers I had seen in America could be
described as "technical and literary." If they were I am afraid the
farmers, at least the farmers in my part of the country, would not read
them.
As illustrating the general intelligence of the farming population,
this same gentleman told me that he had at one time called upon a
creamery manager in a remote district whose salary, in addition to his
house, which was provided him, was about twenty-four shillings, or six
dollars, a week. In his house he found a recent copy of the _Studio_,
a well-known English art publication. On his book shelves, in addition
to the ordinary publications of a dairy expert, he had caught sight of
volumes in English, French, German, and Swedish.
I was impressed with the fact that almost every one I met in Denmark
seemed to be able to speak at least three languages--namely, German,
English, and Danish. I had been greatly surprised on the Sunday night
of my arrival to meet an audience of fully 3,000 persons and find
that at least the majority of those present were able to understand
my speech. In fact I had not spoken ten minutes when I found myself
talking as naturally and as easily to this Danish audience as if I
was addressing a similar number of people in America. The people
even flattered me by laughing at my jokes, and in the right places.
I am convinced that any one who can understand an American joke, can
understand almost anything in the English language.
There is a saying to the effect that if you see a large building in
Germany you may know that it is a military barracks, in England it is a
factory, in Denmark a school. I never saw such healthy, happy, robust
school children as I did in Denmark, and, with all respect to Danish
agriculture, I am convinced that the best crop that Denmark raises is
its children.
While other countries have sought to increase the national wealth and
welfare by developing the material resources, Denmark, having neither
coal, iron, oil, nor any other mineral, nothing but the land, has
increased not only the national wealth but the national comfort and
happiness by improving her people. While other nations have begun the
work of education and, I was going to say, civilization, at the top,
Denmark has begun at the bottom. In doing this Denmark has demonstrated
that it pays to educate the man farthest down.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] "What I Learned About Education in Denmark," chapter XI. "My Larger
Education," Doubleday, Page & Company, 1911.
CHAPTER XVIII
RECONSTRUCTING THE LIFE OF THE LABOURER IN LONDON
At the end of my long journey across Europe I returned to London. I had
seen, during my visit to Denmark, some results of the reorganization of
country life. In this chapter I want to tell something of what I saw
and learned in London of the efforts to reconstruct the life of the
Underman in the more complex conditions of a great city.
In the course of my travels through various parts of the United States,
in the effort to arouse public interest in the work we are trying to
do for the Negro at Tuskegee, I have frequently met persons who have
inquired of me, with some anxiety, as to what, in my opinion, could be
done for the city Negroes, especially that class which is entering in
considerable numbers every year into the life of the larger cities in
the Northern and Southern States. The people who asked this question
assumed, apparently because the great majority of the Negro population
lives on the plantations and in the small towns of the South, that the
work of a school like the Tuskegee Institute, which is located in the
centre of a large Negro farming population, must be confined to the
rural Negro and the South.
In reply to these inquiries I have sometimes tried to point out that
a good many of the problems of the city have their sources in the
country and that, perhaps, the best way to better the situation of the
city Negro is to improve the condition of the masses of the race in
the country. To do this, I explained, would be to attack the evil at
its root, since if country life were made more attractive, the flow of
population to the city would largely cease.
What is true in this respect of the masses of the Negroes in America
is equally true, as I discovered, of similar classes in Europe. Any
one who will take the trouble to look into the cause of European
emigration will certainly be struck with the fact that the conditions
of agriculture in Europe have had a marked effect on the growth and
character of American cities.
This fact suggests the close connection between country conditions
and the city problem, but there is still another side to the matter.
The thing that was mainly impressed upon me by my observation of the
lower strata of London life and the efforts that have been made to
improve it was this: That it is a great deal simpler and, in the
long run, a great deal cheaper to build up and develop a people who
have grown up in the wholesome air of the open country than it is to
regenerate a people who have lived all or most of their lives in the
fetid atmosphere of a city slum. In other words, it is easier to deal
with people who are physically and morally sound than with people who,
by reason of their unhealthy and immoral surroundings, have become
demoralized and degenerate. The first is a problem of education; the
second, one of reconstruction and regeneration.
I think the thing that helped me most to realize the extent and the
difficulty of this work of regeneration in London was the knowledge
that I gained while there of the multitude of institutions and
agencies, of various kinds, which are engaged in this work.
I had been impressed, during my visits to Whitechapel and other
portions of the East End of London, with the number of shelters, homes,
refuges, and missions of all kinds which I saw advertised as I passed
along Whitechapel Road. When I inquired of Rev. John Harris, organizing
secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, who had at one time himself
been engaged in mission work in that part of the city, whether it were
possible to obtain a complete list of all the different types of
charities and institutions of social betterment in London, he placed in
my hands a volume of nearly seven hundred pages devoted entirely to the
classification and description of the various charities, most of which
were located in London.
This book, which was called the "Annual Charities Register and Digest,"
I have read and studied with the greatest interest. I confess that I
was amazed as well at the number and variety of the different charities
as at the amount of time, energy, and money necessary to keep up and
maintain them.
In another volume, "London Statistics," published by the London County
Council, I found the facts about London charities concisely summarized.
From these books I learned that there are something like 2,035
charitable institutions of various kinds in London alone. Perhaps I can
best give some idea of the character of these institutions, a number of
which date back to the eighteenth century and perhaps to still earlier
periods, by giving some details from these two volumes.
There are in London, for example, 112 institutions for the blind, and
143 institutions which give medical aid in one form or another, for
which the total amount of money expended is about five million seven
hundred thousand dollars annually. There are 214 institutions for
the care of convalescents, for which the annual expenditure amounts
to nearly a million and three quarters; 220 homes for children and
training homes for servants, which are maintained at an annual expense
of over four million dollars annually; 257 institutions for "general
and specific relief," which are supported at an annual cost of nearly
six millions.
There are, besides these, 159 institutions for "penitents," which
receive an income of a million per year; 156 institutions for social
and physical improvement, which include a multitude of the most
varied sorts, as, for example, educational, temperance, and Christian
associations, social settlements, boys' brigades, societies for the
improvement of dwellings, for the improvement of national health, for
suppression of the white slave traffic, etc. These 156 institutions are
maintained at an expense of something over three million and a half
dollars per year.
Finally, there are 47 so-called "spiritual" institutions which are
engaged in propagating in various ways and in various forms a knowledge
of the Bible and a belief in the Christian religion. Although the
spiritual associations represent less than one seventeenth of the total
number of charitable organizations, nearly one fourth of the total
amount of the charities is expended in maintaining them.
According to the best estimate that can be made, the amount of money
thus expended is not less than fifty millions annually. This does not
include, either, the sums collected and expended by the different
churches--the Congregational, Catholic, and Established churches.
In two dioceses of the Church of England--namely, those of London
and Southwark--the sums raised in this way amounted to more than six
hundred thousand dollars.
My attention was especially attracted by the number of shelters and
refuges where homeless men, women, and children are given temporary
aid of one kind and another. In addition to eight shelters maintained
by the Salvation Army in different parts of the city, where homeless
men and women are able to obtain a bed and something to eat, there is
the asylum for the houseless poor, which claims to have given nights'
lodging during the winter months to 80,000; the Free Shelter, in
Ratcliffe Street East, which has given nights' lodging to 125,000; the
Ham Yard Soup Kitchen and Hospice, which in 1908-1909 cared for 343 for
an average of sixteen nights; the Providence Right Refuge and Home,
with reports of nearly 2,100 lodgings, suppers, and breakfasts every
week.
In addition to these there is a considerable number of refuges and
shelters for various classes of persons--for sailors, soldiers, Jews,
Asiatics, and Africans; for ballet girls; "ladies who, on account of
their conversion to the Catholic faith, are obliged to leave their
homes or situations"; for "respectable female servants"; homeless boys
and girls, governesses; "Protestant servants while they are seeking
employment in the families of the nobility," and for "young women
employed in hotels and West End clubs."
These are but a few of the many different homes, lodging houses, and
shelters with which the city is provided. In most cases it is stated in
connection with these institutions that vagrants are rigidly excluded,
and the purpose of most of them seems to be to keep respectable but
unfortunate people from going to the public workhouses.
In addition to the fifty millions and more spent in charity, nearly
twenty millions more is expended by the different boroughs of London
for relief to the poor in institutions and in homes. Altogether, it
costs something like seventy million dollars annually to provide for
the poor and unfortunate of the city.
In the Southern States, where nine of the ten million Negroes in
the United States make their homes, practically nothing is spent in
charity upon the Negro. In two or three states reformatories have been
established, so that Negro children arrested for petty crimes may not
be sent to the chain gangs and confined with older and more hardened
criminals employed in the mines and elsewhere. At the last session of
the state legislature of Alabama a bill was passed providing that the
state should take over and support a reformatory for coloured children
which had been established and supported by the Negro women of the
state. In several of the larger Southern cities Young Men's Christian
Associations have been started which are supported by charity, and in
certain instances hospitals have been established.
The only purpose for which the Negro has asked or received
philanthropic aid has been for the support of education. The people of
the United States have been generous in their contributions to Negro
education. In spite of this fact the income of all the Negro colleges,
industrial schools, and other institutions of so-called higher
education in the South is not one fiftieth part of what is expended
every year in London in charity and relief, not for the purpose of
education, but merely to rescue from worse disaster the stranded, the
outcasts, and those who are already lost.[6]
I find, as most people do, I have no doubt, that it is very hard to
realize the significance of a fact that is stated in mere abstract
figures. It is only after I have translated these abstractions into
terms of my own experience that I am able to grasp them. That must be
my excuse here for what may seem a rather far-fetched comparison.
The Negro population of the Southern States is at present about nine
million. In other words, the number of Negroes in the South is just
about one fourth larger than the population of Greater London, which
is something over seven million. Four fifths of this Southern Negro
population still live on the plantations and in the small towns.
From time to time thoughtful and interested persons--some of them, by
the way, Englishmen--have visited the Southern States, talked with
the white people and looked at the Negroes. Then they have gone back
and written despondently, sometimes pessimistically, about the Negro
problem. I wish some of these writers might study the situation of the
races in the South long enough to determine what it would be possible
to do there, not with seventy nor even fifty, but with one million
dollars a year, provided that money were used, not for the purpose of
feeding, sheltering, or protecting the Negro population, for which it
is not needed, but in educating them; in building up the public schools
in the country districts; in providing a system of high schools,
industrial and agricultural schools, such as exists, for example, in
Denmark; in extending the demonstration farming to all the people on
the land, and in encouraging the small colleges to adapt their teaching
to the actual needs of the people so that in the course of time Negro
education in the South could be gradually organized and coördinated
into a single coherent system.
Perhaps I can illustrate in a broad way the difference in the situation
of the poor man in the complex life of a great city like London and
that of a similar class in the simpler conditions of a comparatively
rural community, by a further comparison. The state of Alabama is
nearly as large as England and Wales combined. It had, in 1900, a
little more than one third the present population of what is known
as "Administrative London," which means a city of 4,720,729. Of this
population there were, on an average, 139,916 paupers. In Alabama, with
a population in 1900 of 1,828,696, there were, in 1905, 771 paupers in
almshouses, of whom 414 were white and 357 Negroes. In other words,
while in London there were nearly three paupers for every one thousand
of the population, in Alabama there were a little more than four
paupers for every ten thousand of the population. This does not include
the persons confined in asylums or those who are assisted in their
homes. In Alabama the number of paupers cared for in this way is very
small. As compared with the 2,000 charitable institutions in London,
there were twenty such institutions in Alabama in 1904. Three of these,
a hospital, an old folks' home and orphan asylum, and a school for the
deaf and blind were for Negroes.
I have quoted these figures to show the contrast between conditions in
a large city and a comparatively rural community. But Alabama contains
three cities of considerable size, which may account for a fairly large
number of its paupers, so that I suspect that if the comparison were
strictly carried out it would be found that pauperism is a good deal
more of a city disease than it seems.
The institutions in London to which I have referred, whether managed by
private philanthropy or by the public, are mainly maintained for the
sake of those who have already fallen in the struggle for existence.
They are for the sick and wounded, so to speak. In recent years a
movement has been steadily gaining ground which seeks to get at the
source of this city disease, and by improving the conditions of city
life do away to some extent with the causes of it.
The work of reorganizing the life of the poorer classes in London seems
to have made a beginning some fifty or sixty years ago. The condition
of the working population at that time has been described in the
following words by Mr. Sidney Webb, who has made a profound study of
the condition of the labouring classes in London:
Two thirds of the whole child population was growing up not only
practically without schooling or religious influences of any
kind, but also indescribably brutal and immoral; living amid the
filth of vilely overcrowded courts, unprovided with water supply
or sanitary conveniences, existing always at the lowest level of
physical health, and constantly decimated by disease; incessantly
under temptation by the flaring gin palaces which alone relieve
the monotony of the mean streets to which they were doomed;
graduating almost inevitably into vice and crime amid the now
incredible street life of an unpoliced metropolis.[7]
The first thing attempted was to provide public education for those
who were not able to attend private schools, and, as one writer says,
"rescue the children of the abyss." It was in this rescue work that
England's public schools had their origin. These schools, begun in this
way, steadily gained and broadened until now London has an elaborate
system of continuation, trade and technical schools, culminating
in the reorganized University of London. This system is by no means
perfected; it still is in process, but it gives the outlines of a broad
and generous educational plan, equal in conception and organization at
least to the needs of the largest city in the world.
London already has, for example, 327 night schools, with 127,130
pupils, in which young men and women who have left the day schools may
continue their studies at night or perfect themselves in some branch of
their trade.
Cooking, household management, laundry work, and iron work are taught
in more than half the elementary schools of London. The London County
Council supports fourteen schools which give instruction in the arts
and crafts, and in the trades. In addition, the Government lends its
aid to something like sixty-one other institutions, with an attendance
of over 6,000, in which technical and trade education of some kind
is given. A number of these schools, like the Shoreditch Technical
Institute and the Brixton School of Building, are devoted to a
single trade or group of allied trades. In the Shoreditch Institute
boys are fitted for the furniture trade. Half their time is given
to academic studies and half to work in the trade. At the Brixton
School instruction is given in bricklaying and masonry, plumbing,
painting, architecture, building, and surveying. In other schools
pupils are given instruction in photo-engraving and lithographing, in
fine needlework and engraving, bookbinding, and in many other crafts
requiring a high grade of intelligence and skill.
With the growth of these schools the idea has been gaining ground
that it is not sufficient to rescue those who, through misfortune
or disease, are unable to support themselves; that on the contrary,
instead of waiting until an individual has actually fallen a victim to
what I have called the "city disease," measures of prevention be taken
against pauperism as against other diseases.
Along with this changed point of view has come the insight that the
efficiency of the nation as a whole depends upon its ability to make
the most of the capacities of the whole population.
"Indeed," as Mr. Webb, the writer I have already quoted, says, "we
now see with painful clearness that we have in the long run, for
the maintenance of our preëminent industrial position in the world,
nothing to depend on except the brains of our people. Public education
has insensibly, therefore, come to be regarded, not as a matter of
philanthropy, undertaken for the sake of the children benefited, but,
as a matter of national concern, undertaken in the interest of the
community as a whole."
After the schools, the next direction in which an attempt was made
to improve the condition of the poor in London was in the matter
of housing. The Board of Works first and the London County Council
afterward began some forty years ago buying vast areas in the crowded
parts of London, clearing them of the disreputable buildings, and
then offering them for sale again to persons who would agree to erect
on them sanitary dwellings for the working classes. The Metropolitan
Board of Works, for example, purchased forty-two acres in different
parts of the city for clearance. After the buildings had been torn
down and the sites resold, it was estimated that the net cost would be
about £1,320,619 or about $6,603,395. There lived on this area 22,872
persons, so that the net cost of cleaning up this area and moving
the population into better quarters was something like $281 for each
individual inhabitant.
Then the London County Council took up the work and it decided to begin
building its own houses. Finally, a law was passed that the buildings
so created should rent for more than the rents prevailing in the
district and should pay the cost of maintenance, 3 per cent. on the
capital invested.
On these terms the Metropolitan Board of Works and the London County
Council have cleared in various parts of Central London an area of
nearly eighty-six acres, containing a population of 41,584, at a cost
which averages about $250 per person. On the property thus acquired the
London County Council had in 1907 erected 8,223 tenements with 22,331
rooms. At this time, 1907, there were projected dwellings containing a
total of 28,000 rooms, which, with those already erected, make a total
of over 50,000 rooms. These tenements rent on an average of about 70
cents a week per room, so that the city of Greater London has an annual
income of nearly $760,000 from its rents alone, on which the city
earned in 1901, after all charges were paid, a profit of $10,000.
At first the County Council merely sought to replace the buildings
which it removed, and the new buildings occupied the site of the older
ones. On or near Boundary Street, in the neighbourhood of Bethnal
Green, twenty-two acres were cleared of slums and covered with model
dwellings, provided with wash houses, club rooms and every modern
appliance for health and comfort. The sad thing about it was that after
the buildings were completed and occupied it was found that only eleven
of the former inhabitants remained. They had poured down into slums
in the older part of the city and increased the population in those
already overcrowded regions.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the country private enterprise and private
philanthropy had gone in advance of the London County Council. Outside
of Birmingham and Liverpool garden cities had been erected in which
every family was provided with an acre of land, on some of which men
employed in the factories, when they were not at work, increased their
earnings in some instances as much as £50, or $250, a year.
Then the County Council began to acquire tramways radiating out in
every direction into the suburbs. At the present time the city owns
something over a hundred miles of tramway within the city, and of the
300 miles or more in Greater London the majority is either owned by
London or the suburban boroughs.
At the ends of these lines the London County Council, and more
frequently private individuals, have erected model dwellings on a
large scale and are thus gradually moving the city population into the
country.
In the meantime much has been done in recent years to increase the
number of playgrounds and breathing spaces, to supply bathrooms, wash
houses and other conveniences which make it possible to keep the city
and people in a healthful and sanitary condition. In many of the
principal streets in London I noticed signs directing the people to
public baths which were located somewhere underneath the street. The
different boroughs contributed in 1907 $738,545 in taxes to support
these public baths and bath houses, and at the same time the people
of London paid over $400,000 for bath tickets and $85,000 for laundry
tickets in order to make use of these public conveniences.
Inner London, not including suburbs, has now an area of 6,588 acres in
parks large and small, upon which the city has expended a capital of
$9,125,910 and upon which it expends annually the sum of $548,065 or
thereabout.
Now, the thing that strikes me about all this is that these vast sums
of money which London has spent in clearing up its slums, in providing
decent houses, wider streets, breathing spaces, bath houses, swimming
pools, and washrooms have been spent mainly on sunshine, air, and
water, things which any one may have without cost in the country.
I visited some of these wash houses and saw hundreds of women who had
come in from the surrounding neighbourhood to do their week's washing.
They were paying by the hour for the use of the municipal washtubs and
water, but I am sure they were not any better provided for in this
respect than the coloured women of the South who go down on sunshiny
days to the brook to do their washing, boiling their clothes in a big
iron kettle. I saw the boys in some of the swimming pools, but I did
not see any of them that seemed happier than the boy who goes off to
the brook with his hook and line and by the way takes a plunge in an
old-fashioned swimming hole.
Thus it is that London seems to have found that the best if not the
only way to solve the city problem is by transporting its population
to the country, settling them in colonies in the suburbs, where they
may obtain, at an enormous expense, what four fifths of the Negro
population in this country already have and what they can be taught to
value and keep if some of the money that is now expended or which will
be expended on the city slums were spent in giving the people on the
farm some of the advantages which the city offers, the principal one of
which is a chance for an education.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The annual income of twenty Negro colleges in the United States
was, in 1908, $804,663.
[7] London Education, Nineteenth Century, October 1903, p. 563.
CHAPTER XIX
JOHN BURNS AND THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN IN LONDON
I had heard a good deal, from time to time, about John Burns before I
went to Europe, and when I reached London I took advantage of the first
opportunity that offered to make my acquaintance with him a personal
one. This meeting was a special good fortune to me at the time because,
as I already knew, there is, in all probability, no one in England
who better understands the hopes, ambitions, and the prospects of the
labouring classes than the Rt. Hon. John Burns, President of the Local
Government Board, himself the first labouring man to become a member of
the British Cabinet.
John Burns was born in poverty and went to work at the age of ten.
He had known what it is to wander the streets of London for weeks
and months looking for work. He had an experience of that kind once
after he had lost his job because he made a Socialistic speech.
Having learned by experience the life of that industrial outcast,
the casual labourer, he organized in 1889 the great dock labourers'
strike, which brought together into the labour unions 100,000 starving
and disorganized labourers who had previously been shut out from the
protection of organized labour. Besides that, he has been an agitator;
was for years a marked man, and at one time gained for himself the name
of the "man with the red flag." He has been several times arrested for
making speeches, and has once been imprisoned for three months on the
charge of rioting.
Meanwhile he had become the idol of the working masses and even won
the admiration and respect of the leaders of public opinion. He was
elected in 1889 to the first London County Council, where he worked
side by side with such distinguished men as Frederic Harrison and
Lord Rosebery. He was chosen a member of parliament in 1890, where he
became distinguished for the store of practical information which he
accumulated during his eighteen years of practical experience in the
London County Council.
When he was twenty-one years of age Mr. Burns went as an engineer to
Africa, where he spent a year among the swamps of the Lower Niger,
occasionally fighting alligators and devoting his leisure to the study
of political economy. When he returned he spent the money he had saved
in Africa in six months of travel and study in Europe.
Speaking of what he learned in Africa, Mr. Burns once said: "You talk
of savagery and misery in heathen lands, but from my own experience I
can tell you that there is more of all these, and more degradation of
women, in the slums of London than you will see on the West Coast of
Africa."
He has had a wider experience than most men with mobs, for he has not
only led them, but in 1900 he defended himself with a cricket bat for
two days in his home on Lavender Hill, Battersea, against a mob said
to number 10,000 which hurled stones through the windows and tried to
batter down the door of his house because he had denounced the Boer War
in parliament.
In 1906, after he had been successful in writing something like one
hundred labour laws into the acts of parliament, he accepted the
position of President of Local Government and then became, as I have
said, the first labouring man to accept a place in the British Cabinet.
In reply to the criticisms which were offered when he accepted this
high and responsible position in the government, Mr. Burns said: "I had
to choose whether, for the next ten years, I should indulge, perhaps,
in the futility of faction, possibly in the impotence of intrigue, or
whether I should accept an office which in our day and generation I can
make useful of good works." I have noted this statement because this
is a choice which most reformers and agitators have to make sooner or
later.
He recognized, as he said, that "the day of the agitator was declining
and that of the administrator had begun," and he did not shrink from
accepting a position where he became responsible for administering laws
he had helped to make. In his present position as the head of the Local
Government Board Mr. Burns is probably doing more than any other man to
improve the situation of the poor man in London and in the other large
cities of England.
It is a rare thing for a man who began life in poverty to find himself
in middle life in a position of such power and usefulness as the head
of one great branch of the British Government occupies. It is still
more remarkable, however, that a man who began life as an agitator, the
representative of the unemployed, the most helpless and unfortunate
class in the community, should find himself, a comparatively few years
later, charged with the task of carrying into effect the reforms which
he had preached from the prisoner's dock in a police court. It is all
the more fortunate for England that the Government has found a man
with these qualifications, who has at the same time the training and
qualities of a statesman, to carry the reforms into effect. As Mr.
Burns himself once said: "Depend upon it, there are no such places
for making a public man as Pentonville Prison and the London County
Council."
To me, however, the most surprising thing about it all is that a man
with his history and qualifications should have found his way, by the
ordinary methods of politics, into a position he is so well fitted to
fill. It suggests to me that, in spite of all the misery that one still
may see in London, in England, at least, there is hope for the man
farthest down.
It is not my purpose in this chapter to write a biography of John
Burns, but rather to describe what I saw, under his direction, of what
has already been done in London in the work of "reconstruction," to
which I have already referred. It seemed to me, however, that it was
not out of place to say something, by way of introduction, in regard
to the man who is, perhaps, as much if not more than any one else
responsible for the work now going on, and whose life is connected in a
peculiar way with that part of the city I had opportunity to visit and
with the improvements that have been made there.
John Burns was born and still lives in Battersea, a quarter of the city
inhabited, for the most part, by artisans, mechanics, and labourers of
various kinds, with a sprinkling of gypsy pedlers and the very poor.
Battersea is directly across the river from, and in plain sight of,
the Parliament Buildings, and there is a story to the effect that, as
he was coming home one winter night, helping his mother carry home the
washing by which she supported herself and family, they two stopped
within the shadow of those buildings to rest. Turning to his mother the
boy said: "Mother, if ever I have health and strength no mother shall
have to work as you do."
John Burns has health and strength, and is now making a brave effort to
keep that promise to his mother. Aside from Colonel Roosevelt, I do not
think I ever saw a man who seemed his equal in vigour of mind and body;
who seemed able to compress so much into a short space of time; or one
who goes at the task before him with a greater zest. In all England I
do not believe there is a man who works harder, accomplishes more for
the good of his country and the world, or one who is happier in the
work he is doing.
I found him late in August, when every one else connected with the
government had left London on their vacation, buried deep in the
details and concerns of his office, but chock-full of energy and
enthusiasm.
What John Burns is doing, and the spirit in which he is doing it,
will, perhaps, appear in the course of my description of a trip which
I took with him through his own district of Battersea and the region
adjoining it in order to see what the London County Council is doing
there to make the life of the poor man better. I am sorry that I will
not be able to describe in detail all that I saw on that trip, because
we covered in a short time so much ground, and saw so many different
things, that it was not until I had returned to my hotel, and had an
opportunity to study out the route of that journey, that I was able
to get any definite idea of the direction in which we had gone or of
the connection and general plan which underlay the whole scheme of the
improvements we had seen.
I think it was about two o'clock in the afternoon when we left the
offices of the Local Government Board. Mr. Burns insisted that, before
we started, I should see something of the Parliament Buildings, and he
promised to act as my guide. This hasty trip through the Parliament
Buildings served to show me that John Burns, although he had entered
political life as a Socialist, has a profound reverence for all the
historic traditions and a very intimate knowledge of English history.
I shall not soon forget the eloquent and vivid manner in which he
summoned up for me, as we passed through Westminster Hall, on the
way to the House of Commons, some of the great historical scenes and
events which had taken place in that ancient and splendid room. I was
impressed not only by the familiarity which he showed with all the
associations of the place, but I was thrilled by the enthusiasm with
which he spoke of and described them. It struck me as very strange that
the same John Burns once known as "the man with the red flag," who had
been imprisoned for leading a mob of workmen against the police, should
be quoting history with all the enthusiasm of a student and a scholar.
In the course of our journey we passed through a small strip of
Chelsea. I remember that among the other places we passed he pointed
out the home of Thomas Carlyle. I found that he was just as familiar
with names and deeds of all the great literary persons who had lived in
that quarter of London as he was with the political history.
When he afterward told me that he had had very little education in
school, because he had been compelled to go to work when he was ten
years of age, I asked him how he had since found time, in the course
of his busy life, to gain the wide knowledge of history and literature
which he evidently possessed.
"You see," he replied, with a quiet smile, "I earned my living for a
time as a candle maker and I have burned a good many candles at night
ever since."
Mr. Burns had promised to show me, within the space of a few hours,
examples of the sort of work which is now going on in every part of
London. A few years ago, on the site of an ancient prison, the London
County Council erected several blocks of workingmen's tenements. These
were, I believe, the first, or nearly the first, of the tenements
erected by the city in the work of clearing away unsanitary areas and
providing decent homes for the working classes.
It was to these buildings, in which a population of about 4,000 persons
live, that we went first. The buildings are handsome brick structures,
well lighted, with wide, open, brick-paved courts between the rows of
houses, so that each block looked like a gigantic letter H with the
horizontal connecting line left out.
Of course, these buildings were, as some one said, little more than
barracks compared with the houses that are now being erected for
labouring people in some of the London suburbs, but they are clean and
wholesome and, to any one familiar with the narrow, grimy streets in
the East End of London, it was hard to believe that they stood in the
midst of a region which a few years ago had been a typical London slum.
A little farther on we crossed the river and entered what Mr. Burns
referred to as "my own district," Battersea, where he was born and
where he has lived and worked all his life, except for one year spent
as an engineer in Nigeria, Africa.
The great breathing place for the people of this region is Battersea
Park, and as we sped along the edge of this beautiful green space,
stopping to look for a moment at the refreshment booths on the cricket
grounds, or to speak to a group of well-dressed boys going from school
to the playgrounds, Mr. Burns interspersed his information about
workmen's wages, the price of rents, and the general improvement of
the labouring classes with comment on the historic associations of the
places we passed. Where Battersea Park now stands there was formerly a
foul and unwholesome swamp. Near here the Duke of Wellington had fought
a duel with the Earl of Winchelsea, and a little farther up Julius
Cæsar, nearly two thousand years ago, forded the river with one of his
legions.
It was a happy and novel experience to observe the pleasure which
Mr. Burns took in pointing out the improvement in the people, in the
dwellings, and in the life of the people generally, and to note, in
turn, the familiar and cheerful way with which all sorts of people we
met on the streets greeted him as we passed.
"Hello! Johnny Burns," a group of schoolboys would call as we went
by. Once we passed by a group of some fifteen or twenty workingwomen
sitting in one of the refreshment booths, drinking their afternoon tea
and, apparently, holding a neighbourhood meeting of some kind or other.
As they recognized the man who, as member of the London County Council,
had been responsible for most of the improvements that had been made in
the homes and surroundings in which they lived, they stood up and waved
their handkerchiefs, and even attempted a faint and feminine "hurrah
for Johnny Burns," the member from Battersea.
There are 150,000 people in Battersea, but Mr. Burns seemed to be
acquainted with every one of them, and when he wanted to show me the
inside of some of the new "County Council houses," as they are called,
did not hesitate to knock at the nearest door, where we were gladly
welcomed. The people seamed to be just as proud of their new houses,
and of Mr. Burns, as he was of them.
The houses which we visited were, some of them, no more than three or
four rooms, but each one of them was as neat and wholesome as if it had
been a palace. They were very compactly built, but provided with every
sort of modern convenience, including electric lights and baths.
There were houses of five and six rooms intended for clerks and small
business men, which rented for a pound a week, and there were cheaper
houses, for ordinary labouring people, which rented for two dollars
per week. These houses are built directly under the direction of the
London County Council, and are expected to pay 3 per cent. upon the
investment, after completion.
The London County Council was not the first to make the experiment of
building decent and substantial houses for the labouring classes. Some
thirty years before, on what is known as the Shaftbury Park Estate,
1,200 houses, which provide homes for eleven thousand people, were
erected and the investment had been made to pay.
I looked down the long lanes of little vine-covered buildings which
make up this estate. It seemed as if some great army had settled on
the land and built permanent quarters.
These labour colonies were interesting, not merely for the improvement
they had made in the lives of a large section of the people living in
this part of the city, but as the forerunner of those garden cities
which private enterprise has erected at places like Port Sunlight,
near Liverpool; Bourneville, in the outskirts of Birmingham, and at
Letchworth, thirty-four miles from London.
Not far from Battersea Park, and in a part of the city which was
formerly inhabited almost wholly by the very poor, we visited the
public baths and a public washhouse where, during the course of a
year, 42,000 women come to wash their clothes, paying at the rate of
three cents an hour for the use of the municipal tubs and hot water.
Children pay a penny or two cents for the use of the public baths. The
building is also provided with a gymnasium for the use of the children
in winter, and contains a hall which is rented to workingmen's clubs at
a nominal price.
What pleased me most was to see the orderly way in which the children
had learned to conduct themselves in these places, which, as was
evident, had become not merely places for recreation, but at the same
time schools of good manners.
We passed on the streets groups of neatly dressed, well-bred looking
boys, with their books slung over their arms, going home from school or
making their way to the park. Mr. Burns was delighted at the sight of
these clean-cut, manly looking fellows.
"Look at those boys, Mr. Washington," he would exclaim, as he pointed
proudly to one or another of these groups. "Isn't that doing pretty
well for the proletariat?"
Then he would leap out of the automobile, before the driver could
stop, put his arm around the boy nearest him and, in a moment, come
back triumphant with the confirmation of his statement that the boy's
father was, as he had said, only a small clerk or a letter carrier, or,
perhaps, the son of a common labourer, a navvy.
When I contrasted the appearance of these well-dressed and well-behaved
boys with some of those I had seen elsewhere, with the children who
attend the so-called "ragged" schools, for example, I understood and
shared his enthusiasm.
From Battersea Park we went to Clapham Common and, as we were speeding
along through what appeared to be a quarter of well-to-do artisans'
homes, Mr. Burns nodded casually in the direction of a little vine-clad
cottage and said:
"That is where I live."
Although Mr. Burns now occupies one of the highest positions in the
British Government, in which he has a salary of $10,000 a year, he has
not yet assumed the high hat and the long-tailed coat which are the
recognized uniform in London of a gentleman. On the contrary, he wears
the same blue reefer coat and soft felt hat, speaks the same language,
lives in the same style, and is apparently in every respect the same
man that he was when he was living on the $25 a week guaranteed him by
the Battersea Labour League when he entered parliament. He is still a
labouring man and proud of the class to which he belongs.
It was at Clapham Common, although Mr. Burns did not mention this fact,
that he was arrested for the first time, away back in 1878, for making
a public speech. It was somewhere in this region also, if I remember
rightly, that Mr. Burns pointed out to us a private estate on which
3,000 houses of the cheaper class had been erected.
"And mind you, there is no public house," said Mr. Burns. Instead he
showed us a brand-new temperance billiard hall which had been erected
to compete with, and take the place of, the bar-rooms which have
disappeared.
At Lower Tooting, an estate of some thirty-eight acres, the London
County Council is building outright a city of something like 5,000
inhabitants, laying out the streets, building the houses, even putting
a tidy little flower garden in each separate front door yard. It was as
if the London County Council had gone to playing dolls, so completely
planned and perfectly carried out in every detail is this little garden
city.
Mr. Burns, who has all his life been an advocate of temperance,
although he had once served as pot-boy in a public house, pointed out
here, as he did elsewhere, that there was no public house.
In the building of this little paradise all the architectural and
engineering problems had indeed been solved. There remained, however,
the problem of human nature, and the question that I asked myself was:
Will these people be able to live up to their surroundings?
It is fortunate, in this connection, that in Mr. Burns the inhabitants
have a leader who dares to speak plainly to them of their faults as
well as their virtues and who is able, at the same time, to inspire
them with an ambition and enthusiasm for the better life which is
opened to them. Engineering and architecture cannot do everything, but
education, leadership of the right sort, may complete what these have
begun.
At Warden Street and Lydden Road, on our way back to the city, we
stopped to look for a moment at what Mr. Burns said was the most
wretched part of the population in that quarter of the city. The houses
were two-story dwellings, with the sills flush with the pavement,
in front of which groups of lounging idle men and women stood or
squatted on the pavement. A portion of the street was given up to gypsy
vans, and the whole population was made up, as I learned, of pedlers
and pushcart venders, a class of people who, in the very centre of
civilization, manage somehow to maintain a nomadic and half-barbarous
existence, wandering from one place to another with the seasons, living
from hand to mouth, working irregularly and not more than half the time.
A little farther on we passed by the Price candle factory, "where I
began work at a dollar a week," said Mr. Burns in passing. A group of
workmen were just coming from the factory as we passed, and the men
recognized Mr. Burns and shouted to him as he passed.
Then we drove on back across the Chelsea Bridge and along the river
to the Parliament Buildings again. "Now," said Mr. Burns at the end
of our journey, "you have seen a sample of what London is doing for
its labouring population. If you went further you would see more, but
little that is new or different."
CHAPTER XX
THE FUTURE OF THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN
Upon my arrival in London I found myself, at the end of my journey,
once more at my point of departure. A few days later, October 9th, to
be precise, I sailed from Liverpool for New York. I had been less than
seven weeks in Europe, but it seemed to me that I had been away for a
year. My head was full of strange and confused impressions and I was
reminded of the words of the traveller who, after he had crossed Europe
from London to Naples, and had visited faithfully all the museums and
neglected none of the regular "sights," wrote to friends he had visited
in Europe a letter full of appreciation, concluding with the remark:
"Well, I have seen a great deal and learned a great deal, and I _thank
God it is all over_."
It occurs to me that the readers who have followed me thus far in
my narrative may find themselves at the conclusion of this book in
somewhat the same situation as myself at the end of my journey. In that
case it will, perhaps, not be out of place to take advantage of this
concluding chapter to do for them as well as I am able what I tried to
do for myself during my hours of leisure on the voyage home--namely,
make a little clearer the relation of all that I had seen and learned
to the problem of the Negro and The Man Farthest Down.
I have touched, in the course of these chapters, upon many phases
of life. I have had something to say, for example, in regard to the
poverty, education, Socialism, and the race problems of Europe, since
all these different matters are connected in one way or another with
the subject and purpose of my journey and this book.
In attempting to add the moral to my story, however, and state in
general terms the upshot of it all, I find myself at a disadvantage. I
can, perhaps, best explain what I mean by recalling the fact that I was
born a slave and since I became free have been so busy with the task
immediately in front of me that I have never had time to think out my
experiences and formulate my ideas in general terms. In fact, almost
all that I know about the problems of other races and other peoples I
have learned in seeking a solution and a way out for my own people. For
that reason I should have done better perhaps to leave to some one with
more learning and more leisure than I happen to possess the task of
writing about the Underman in Europe. In fact I would have done so if I
had not believed that in making this journey I should gain some insight
and, perhaps, be able to throw some new light upon the situation of
my own people in America. Indeed, I confess that I should never have
taken the time--brief as it was--to make this long journey if I had not
believed it was going to have some direct relation to the work which I
have been trying to do for the people of my race in America.
In this, let me add, I was not disappointed. As a matter of fact, if
there was one thing more than another, in all my European experiences,
which was impressed upon my mind, it was the fact that the position
of the Negro in America, both in slavery and in freedom, has not been
so exceptional as it has frequently seemed. While there are wide
differences between the situation of the people in the lower levels of
life in Europe and the Negro in America, there are still many points of
resemblance, and the truth is that the man farthest down in Europe has
much in common with the man at the bottom in America.
For example, the people at the bottom in Europe have been, in most
cases, for the greater part of their history at least, like the Negroes
in America, a subject people, not slaves, but bondmen or serfs, at any
rate a disadvantaged people.
In most cases the different under-classes in Europe only gained their
freedom in the course of the last century. Since that time they have
been engaged in an almost ceaseless struggle to obtain for themselves
the political privileges that formerly belonged to the upper classes
alone.
Even in those places where the man at the bottom has gained political
privileges resembling in most respects those of the classes at the
top he finds, as the Negro in America has found, that he has only
made a beginning, and the real work of emancipation remains to be
done. The English labourer, for example, has had political freedom
for a longer period of time than is true of any other representative
of this class in Europe. Notwithstanding this fact, as things are, he
can only in rare instances buy and own the land on which he lives. The
labouring people of England live, for the most part, herded together
with millions of others of their class in the slums of great cities,
where air and water are luxuries. They are dependent upon some other
nation for their food supplies, for butter, bread, and meat. And then,
as a further consequence of the way they are compelled to live, the
masses of the people find themselves part of an economic arrangement
or system which is so vast and complicated that they can neither
comprehend nor control it.
The result is that the English labourer, of whose independence the
world has heard so much, is, in many respects, more dependent than any
other labouring class in Europe. This is due not to the fact that the
English labourer lacks political rights, but to the fact that he lacks
economic opportunities--opportunities to buy land and opportunities to
labour; to own his own home, to keep a garden and raise his own food.
The Socialists have discovered that the independence of the labouring
classes has been undermined as a result of the growth of factories and
city life, and believe they have found a remedy.
What the Socialists would actually do in England or elsewhere,
provided they should manage to get into power, is difficult to say,
because, as my experience in Europe has taught me, there are almost
as many kinds of Socialists as there are kinds of people. The real
old-fashioned Socialists, those who still look forward to some great
social catastrophe which will put an end to the present régime, believe
it will then be possible to use the political power of the masses
to reorganize society in a way to give every individual an economic
opportunity equal to that of every other.
Taking human beings as we find them, I have never been able to see how
this was going to be brought about in precisely the way outlined in
the Socialist programme. Some individuals will be good for one thing,
some for another, and there will always be, I suppose, a certain number
who will not be good for anything. As they have different capacities,
so they will have different opportunities. Some will want to do one
thing and some another, and some individuals and some people, like
the Jews for example, will know how to make their disadvantages their
opportunities and so get the best of the rest of the world, no matter
how things are arranged.
I have referred to the Socialists and the revolution they propose not
because I wish to oppose their doctrines, which I confess I do not
wholly understand, but because it seemed to me that, as I went through
Europe and studied conditions, I could see the evidences of a great,
silent revolution already in full progress. And this revolution to
which I refer is touching and changing the lives of those who are at
the bottom, particularly those in the remote farming communities, from
which the lowest class of labourers in the city is constantly recruited.
Let me illustrate what I mean: Under the old system in Europe--the
feudal system, or whatever else it may at various times have been
called--civilization began at the top. There were a few people who
were free. They had all the wealth, the power, and the learning in
their hands, or at their command. When anything was done it was because
they wished it or because they commanded it. In order to give them
this freedom and secure to them this power it was necessary that vast
numbers of other people should live in ignorance, without any knowledge
of, or share in, any but the petty life of the estate or the community
to which they belonged. They were not permitted to move from the spot
in which they were born, without the permission of their masters. It
was, in their case, almost a crime to think. It was the same system,
in a very large degree, as that which existed in the Southern States
before the war, with the exception that the serfs in Europe were white,
while the slaves in the Southern States were black.
In Europe to-day the great problem to which statesmen are giving their
thought and attention is not how to hold the masses of the people down
but how to lift them up; to make them more efficient in their labour
and give them a more intelligent share and interest in the life of the
community and state of which they are a part. Everywhere in Europe the
idea is gaining ground and influence that the work of civilization must
begin at the bottom instead of at the top.
The great medium for bringing about these changes is the school. In
every part of Europe which I visited I was impressed with the multitude
of schools of various kinds which are springing up to meet the new
demand. The movement began earlier and has gone farther in Denmark than
it has elsewhere, and the remarkable development of Danish country life
has been the result. What has been accomplished in Denmark, through
the medium of the country high schools, and in Germany, through the
universities and technical training schools, is being industriously
imitated elsewhere.
In England I found that people were saying that the reason why German
manufactures had been able to compete so successfully with the English
products was because Germany had the advantage of better schools. In
Germany I found that the German army, organized in the first instance
for the national defence, is now looked upon as a great national
school, in which the masses of the people get an education and
discipline which, it is claimed, are gradually raising the industrial
efficiency of the nation.
There, as elsewhere, education is seeking to reach and touch every
class and every individual of every class in the community. The deaf,
the blind, the defectives of every description are now beginning to
receive industrial education fitting them for trades in which they
will be more useful to the community and more independent than it was
possible for them to be when no attempt was made to fit them for any
place in the life of the community.
The effect of this movement, or revolution, as I have called it, is
not to "tear down and level up" in order to bring about an artificial
equality, but to give every individual a chance "to make good," to
determine for himself his place and position in the community by the
character and quality of the service he is able to perform.
One effect of this change in point of view which I have described is
that to-day there is hardly any one thing in which the people of Europe
are more concerned than in the progress and future of the man farthest
down.
In all that I have written in the preceding chapters I have sought
to emphasize, in the main, two things: first, that behind all the
movements which have affected the masses of the people, Socialism or
nationalism, emigration, the movements for the reorganization of city
and country life, there has always been the Underman, groping his way
upward, struggling to rise; second, that the effect of all that has
been done to lift the man at the bottom, or to encourage him to lift
himself, has been to raise the level of every man above him.
If it is true, as I have so often said, that one man cannot hold
another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with him,
it is just as true that, in helping the man who is down to rise, the
man who is up is freeing himself from a burden that would else drag him
down. It is because the world seems to realize this fact more and more
that, beyond and above all local and temporary difficulties, the future
of the man farthest down looks bright.
And now at the conclusion of my search for the man farthest down in
Europe let me confess that I did not succeed in finding him. I did
not succeed in reaching any place in Europe where conditions were so
bad that I did not hear of other places, which friends advised me to
visit, where conditions were a great deal worse. My own experience was,
in fact, very much like that of a certain gentleman who came South
some years ago to study the condition of the Negro people. He had
heard that in many parts of the South the Negro was gradually sinking
back into something like African savagery, and he was particularly
desirous of finding a well-defined example of this relapse into
barbarism. He started out with high hopes and a very considerable fund
of information as to what he might expect to find and as to the places
where he might hope to find it. Everywhere he went in his search,
however, he found that he had arrived a few years too late. He found
at every place he visited people who were glad to tell him the worst
there was to be known about the coloured people; some were even kind
enough to show what they thought was about the worst there was to be
found among the Negroes in their particular part of the country. Still
he was disappointed because he never found anything that approached
the conditions he was looking for, and usually he was compelled to be
contented with the statement, made to him by each one of his guides
in turn, which ran something like this: "Conditions were not near as
bad as they had been. A few years ago, if he had happened to have come
that way, he would have been able to see things, and so forth; but
now conditions were improving. However, if he wanted to see actual
barbarism he should visit"--and then they usually named some distant
part of the country with which he had not yet become acquainted.
In this way this gentleman, who was hunting the worst that was to be
seen among the Negroes, as I was hunting the worst that was to be seen
among the people of Europe, travelled all over the Southern States,
going from one dark corner to another, but never finding things as bad
as they were advertised. Instead of that, backward as the people were
in many of the remote parts of the country, he found, just as I did
in Europe, that everywhere the people were making progress. In some
places they were advancing more slowly than they were in others, but
everywhere there was, on the whole, progress rather than decline. The
result in his case was the same as it had been in mine, the farther
he went and the more he saw of the worst there was to see, the more
hopeful he became of the people as a whole.
I saw much that was primitive and much that was positively evil in the
conditions in Europe, but nowhere did I find things as bad as they
were described to me by persons who knew them as they were some years
before. And I found almost no part of the country in which substantial
progress had not been made; no place, in short, where the masses of the
people were without hope.
It will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons that, after I had gone
to Europe for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the
people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as I was able, the worst
in European life, I should have returned with a hopeful rather than a
pessimistic view of what I saw.
The fact is, however, that the farther I travelled in Europe, and the
more I entered into the life of the people at the bottom, the more I
found myself looking at things from the point of view of the people who
are looking up, rather than from that of the people who are at the top
looking down, and, strange as it may seem, it is still true that the
world looks, on the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and more
filled with God's providence, when you are at the bottom looking up
than when you are at the top looking down.
To the man in the tower the world below him is likely to look very
small. Men look like ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying
lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. But the man in the street
who is looking and striving upward is in a different situation. However
poor his present plight, the thing he aims at and is striving toward
stands out clear and distinct above him, inspiring him with hope and
ambition in his struggle upward. For the man who is down there is
always something to hope for, always something to be gained. The man
who is down, looking up, may catch a glimpse now and then of heaven,
but the man who is so situated that he can only look down is pretty
likely to see another and quite different place.
THE END
[Illustration: Logo]
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
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